


Bloodier Chemistry

by jdphoenix



Series: drabble collections [8]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:40:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 77
Words: 78,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Another collection of biospecialist fics prompted on my tumblr. Ratings and content will vary but warnings will be given on appropriate chapters.Updated 8/04 with chapter 77





	1. caught*

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters with an asterisk were never posted on tumblr, generally due to content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: biospecialist + ‘i caught you masturbating’ sex. **Obvious warnings apply.**

There is part of Jemma - a shameful, selfish part - that wants to take Trip up on his offer to do this interview for her. But there’s no telling when he’ll be away on a mission and it’s really safer (as if _that_ should be her primary concern here) if she’s up to date should an emergency occur while he’s detained elsewhere.

Still, she’d very much like to get this over with, so she walks swiftly and lightly down the stairs to Vault D, intent on finishing the interview within ten minutes.

“All right, Ward,” she says loudly (she knows he’s awake, saw him herself a few hours ago, but it won’t do to let him know that) and turns the barrier transparent. “It’s time for your check up. You know-” Her carefully aloof tone dies on a woefully high-pitched cry of shock when she actually _sees_ Ward.

“Simmons,” he says. His tone of voice is precisely as rough and low as would be expected given what he’s … doing … but there’s something deeply wrong about his speaking her name that way. Worse is her own (completely natural and not at all her fault) reaction to it. “Sorry,” he says as (disgusting, shameful) warmth pools low in her belly. “Kinda busy. Almost there.”

Her eyes drop to where his hand is fast at work between his legs. Yes, he certainly-

She turns on her heel, her eyes flying to the ceiling. The nice, dull ceiling. Nothing to see there.

“Will you _stop that_?” she demands. “I need to talk to you about your injuries.”

He chuckles, but it comes out breathy as his control wavers. “What’s wrong, Simmons?” There he goes again, saying her name. He really needs to stop. “It’s not like you’ve never seen me like this before.”

The blush she’s been struggling with flares up so badly the Vault’s temperature readings are probably sending up an alert.

She hates him. Shehateshimshehateshimshehateshim.

How _dare_ he bring that up. How dare he even _think_ of when she allowed him (she was more than eager for the opportunity herself) to touch her.

It was after Lorelei. She’d gone upstairs after the computer refused to begin sterilization of the Cage, claiming a life form was present inside, and found him there. Like this.

It wasn’t what it looked like, he said while shamefully attempting to hide himself. (She’s long suspected that was another artifice, now she has her proof.) He hadn’t chosen that room because the object of his affection had been in it for the last three hours before Sif dragged her away. In fact he’d rather have gone anywhere else, but the Cage - and his personal override shutting off the cameras - provided privacy.

He had, however, required that privacy _because_ of Lorelei. He believed she’d left some imprint on him, forcing him to debase himself even after she was gone.

Somehow - she’s still not certain how - Jemma’s promises not to tell a soul about his condition led to her joining him. He seemed grateful, eager to have someone to think about other than that witch. And Jemma was more than happy to live out her pathetic fantasies of him actually wanting her.

He was rougher than she’d imagined, leaving bite marks and bruises and a pleasant soreness that lingered long after they left the Cage. But he more than satisfied the months she’d spent building him up in her mind.

She touches a hand to her neck. The bruise he left there didn’t fade until after the uprising. She actually indulged in the fanciful thought that it was a bad omen, the last bruise disappearing while he was off - she thought - locking Garrett away.

Perhaps she was right.

She dares a look over her shoulder and is promptly frozen in place. Ward no longer faces the wall of his cell, he’s turned to sit on the side of the bed facing her, and his eyes meet hers steadily. There can be no doubt he’s been watching her.

She can’t help but be taken back to that day. The smell of their sweat and sex filling the Cage, his body pounding obscenely into hers, his eyes dark and steady on her face. She had the pathetic, girlish thought then that she’d never forget that moment. She wishes with all her heart she could now.

Or, at the very least, that Ward would.

For all he said he was nearly there, he’s taking his sweet time about finishing. It has to be another manipulation, an attempt at unnerving her.

Not to be cowed, she faces him (she has, as he said, seen him in such a state before, it’s nothing to be shocked by) and draws her eyes slowly down from his face to his chest and lower still. She traces the same path on her own body, forcing his eye to mirror hers. When her hand finally draws even with his, she curls her fingers loosely inward and-

“Fuck,” he bites out. 

He’s done.

Finally.

She takes the seat outside his cell. “If you’re quite finished?”

He grins toothily at her while hitching his pants over his hips. “Are you?”

She doesn’t let his question - or the innuendo-laden answers he ultimately gives regarding his recovery - get to her. She’s here to do a job, nothing more.

Later, however, when she’s alone in her quarters and has just woken from a dream in which he presses her down, not into the narrow cot from the Cage but the twin bed in the Vault, his words get to her quite a bit.

 


	2. un(der)cover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Skye's party, she just wants Jemma to have fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For wssummer's wedding AU theme.

“Skye, _no_ ,” Jemma pleads while attempting to plant her feet. The wedge sandals Skye forced on her earlier this evening land unevenly on the carpeted floor, allowing Skye the leverage she needs to easily push Jemma through the thick curtain.

“Skye, _yes_ ,” Skye counters with a slightly manic grin. Accompanied by the fuzzy pink tiara sitting askew on her head and the t-shirt she’s wearing emblazoned with her and Lincoln’s faces, she’s looking positively terrifying. 

The backs of Jemma’s knees brush against the couch that rims the small space and she jumps away as if burned. “Really. I don’t need this. It’s your party-”

Skye’s hands land on her shoulders and, with positively inhuman strength, push her down onto the couch. Jemma tries very hard not to think about all the fluids that have touched the plastic upholstery. 

“And _I_ want _you_ to do this,” Skye says. The amount of alcohol on her breath makes Jemma’s eyes water; perhaps they should call it a night. “Come _on_ , Jem-Jam,” she whines, “you can’t tell me you didn’t notice the way he looked at you out there.”

No, Jemma certainly can’t say that. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw her sitting at the end of the stage with the rest of their party. 

“And I _know_ you noticed those abs.”

Oh yes, she most definitely did. And the reminder of them - of how they looked lit up by the strategic lights of the strip club and glistening with whatever it is they put on them backstage - leaves her slightly adrift.

“Ha!” 

Jemma snaps out of it and is surprised to find Skye is no longer holding her down, but backing out through the curtain. 

“Have _fu-un_!” she sing-songs. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

The curtain falls closed, leaving Jemma in a space no bigger than a closet with only a couch and a stripper pole for company. 

“That leaves quite a lot of room for bad decisions!” she yells. The curtain comes open again and she’s all set to follow her accusation up by calling Lincoln’s sanity into question, but it’s not Skye coming back in. Jemma does catch a glimpse of her - her and her giddy grin - under the very well-sculpted arm pushing the curtain aside, and then she’s gone, the curtain’s closed once more, and this time Jemma’s alone with the couch, the pole, and one very attractive man.

Her lower lip disappears behind her teeth as he comes closer. It’s unfair, really, just how attractive he is. There are all sorts of silly thoughts in her head - ones she is blaming firmly on the alcohol she’s imbibed this evening - about dark, predatory stares and the motion of muscles beneath too-tight shirts.

Even with the thin fabric covering them, his abs still look amazing and, as she cannot possibly meet his eyes, she’s stuck looking at them. And then, as he comes closer, it’s only natural her eyes would travel lower to-

“ _No_ ,” she says, holding up a hand to stall his progress. She steels her spine and lifts her chin. “No, we will _not_ be doing this.”

He grins and _oh_ , that smile is even more unfair than the rest of him. He reaches out and for a moment she thinks he’s going to touch her, but then his hand settles on the seatback behind her. “I’m afraid we’re gonna have to.” Her mouth goes dry as he leans in closer. He tips his head to one of the darker corners of the room. “Your friend left her phone. It’s too close to the speaker to make out anything we say, so long as we keep it quiet, but she’ll still have video of everything.”

Realization - very belated realization; she’s honestly disappointed in herself - dawns and she looks around even though there’s nothing to see in the space but dark curtains and the bright light of the spotlight over the pole. She leans forward to whisper even more lowly than he did. “You’re on a mission?”

One dark eyebrow cocks in amusement. “You think this is my night job?”

She relaxes somewhat. Of _course_ this is a mission. Her only excuse for not realizing Agent Ward was stripping under orders was the utter shock of seeing _Agent Ward stripping_. He’s always so stiff and somber when he comes into her lab for a quick suture or exam, seeing him out there … like that …

She can only hope the low lights prevent him seeing her blush.

He begins undoing his top buttons and those hopes effectively vanish; she’s probably beet red.

“Wh- wh- what are you doing here?” she asks shakily. No matter how hard she tries she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the skin he’s revealing. Which is absurd, it’s not as though she’s never seen his chest before - she just saw it outside! - she’s even touched it while patching up his injuries. “Or is it above my clearance?”

His fingers stall and his eyes narrow. “Four, right?”

She nods. She was promoted only a few short months ago.

He lets his knees rest on either side of her legs. “You wanna try?”

The non sequitur catches her off guard and he has to hold out the next button for her. “Help a guy out?”

“ _Ward_ ,” she says, shooting for chiding.

“Hey, your friend paid for a show.”

She musters the look that always manages to see Fitz backing down.

Ward, it should be said, is a specialist trained to face cold-blooded killers and terrorists the world over; he isn’t intimidated by her scathing looks. “ _Jemma_ ,” he says, taking her hand gently in his - it’s so much _bigger_  than hers - and moving it to the buttons of his shirt. “I’m on a mission here. I need to keep my cover.”

She squirms in her seat. She wants, more than anything, to flee this room and this bar and go somewhere where no one has ever seen or heard of Grant Ward because maybe there she’ll be able to pretend this won’t be featuring in her most scandalous dreams for months to come.

But she can’t do that. He’s on a _mission_. What if her refusal exposes him and he’s put in danger?

Her fingers close over the button, moving it to the hole but not through it. She lifts her eyes to his and nearly loses her nerve - when did he get so close?

“Come with me to the wedding?” she asks.

He blinks and that grin threatens to widen.

“I can’t think of any better revenge than forcing Skye to explain to her new husband that her maid of honor brought the stripper from the hen party to the wedding.”

His hips brush her knees and the button comes undone. “You are evil,” he says and spins away. The shirt falls from his shoulders to his hands and he twirls it twice before tossing it to her. He steps onto the small pseudo-stage the pole is affixed to, his hips moving in concert with the music pouring from the speakers. “But yeah. Text me the info and I’ll make it work.”

Jemma sits back, figuring she might as well enjoy the show while it’s on offer. “Would you also mind wearing something sparkly?”

He laughs so hard he nearly falls off the stage.

 


	3. my decision is final

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A s1 Father's Day fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "my decision is final" from shineyma.

“My decision is final,” Coulson says levelly. He’s using that tone he only does when he’s _really_ mad, the one that’s been known to stop Fitz and Simmons from babbling for a full hour after its use even though the lab’s two levels down from Coulson’s office. Which makes it even more shocking that, on the screen, Agent Blake actually _opens his mouth_ to keep arguing.

Coulson cuts the signal before he can get a word out. He swivels back around in his chair, muttering under his breath about protocols and the threat of court marshal.

Grant shifts uncomfortably. “Sir?”

Coulson blinks up at him, no small amount of shock showing on his face. “You’re still here?”

Now it’s Grant’s turn to be surprised. “Sir?” He hasn’t exactly been dismissed.

“ _Go_ ,” Coulson says, waving his hand towards the door. “You did what you had to do, no one’s disputing that.”

In point of fact, Agent Blake was disputing that pretty strenuously

“I’m not saying there won’t be any ramifications, but I’ll do what I can to mitigate them. Now go. Your son’s waiting.”

That’s all it takes to get Grant out the door and down the stairs. 

The Bus is quiet the way it always is after a particularly bad mission - and rescuing Jack from AIM was definitely that - but, knowing there’s a small child on board, he can’t help but find it a little eerie. 

Last Grant saw, Jack still had a death-grip on Simmons so smart money’s on him being in the lab. The quickest way down is the ladder behind the cockpit, but coming in from the back might scare Jack after what he’s been through, so Grant makes a beeline for the main stairs to the cargo bay. Good thing too because smart money’s a loser; Jack’s in the lounge. 

Grant’s feet turn to lead beneath him and he’s frozen next to the kitchen counter, eyes fixed on his son’s sleeping face. He looks peaceful, content to sleep the rest of the day away, curled up against Simmons’ chest. If it weren’t burned into Grant’s brain, he’d never even know that just a few short hours ago Jack was sobbing and crying so bad he couldn’t even _speak_. His face was twisted in fear and he was so red Simmons had to reassure Grant he was fine, just scared.

It’s been nearly two hours and Grant can still hear his pitiful cry of “Mama!” like a knife.

He navigates his way between the couches and chairs to sit on the edge of the coffee table. He’s not really sure what he’s gonna do but he knows just _seeing_ Jack isn’t enough. He saw him yesterday on the screens of the briefing room, saw his terrified face blown up bigger than life; just because he could see him then didn’t mean his son was safe.

He reaches out slowly to rest his hand on the tiny back. Jack’s still so _small_ , Grant could map the whole width of his back between his thumb and middle finger. 

Jack’s heart is beating and his lungs rise and fall in a steady rhythm. He even shifts a little under the slight pressure, wipes his face against Simmons’ collarbone before sighing out a tiny breath that makes Grant’s heart constrict.

“Do you want to-?”

Grant doesn’t jump - he’s too well trained for that - but that doesn’t mean he’s not surprised. He didn’t even notice Simmons wake up.

Her feet slip down the length of the couch and her shoulders lift like she’s planning on handing Jack over but Grant holds up a hand to stop her.

“No. He’s comfortable.” After the day Jack’s had, he deserves a decent nap against a pretty woman’s chest. Of course, the woman in question’s had a hell of a day too. “Unless you’d rather…?”

She shakes her head with a smile while she settles back in place. “I’m fine. He can sleep all he likes, poor thing. Getting kidnapped is no fun.”

“You should know.” They’re keeping their voices low out of deference to Jack, but Grant manages a tone that, he hopes, encompasses all his worry and thanks.

She tips her head down to see Jack’s face. “I’d do it again.”

“You could’ve died.”

She gives him a _look_ because of course she wouldn’t have; she was the whole _point_. AIM thought they could get him to deliver her if they used his son as collateral and Simmons, being Simmons, decided the only way to get Jack out safely was to offer herself up as ordered.

It’s a miracle it worked.

“Or worse,” he adds in answer to her look.

She presses her lips to Jack’s dark hair and mutters something that sounds a whole lot like “would’ve been worth it,” but Grant can’t think about that. Not after today and maybe not ever. 

She’s looking as tired as Grant feels, so he grabs the blanket from the back of the couch and arranges it over Jack. By the time he’s got it just right - which involves a lot more fussing than Grant will ever admit to - Simmons’ eyes are shut and she looks as peaceful as Jack. 

He smiles at the picture they make, that knife tearing a little deeper. He’s not sure yet whether Jack realizes all that happened and he’s not looking forward to that conversation, but for now at least Jack’s got Simmons to hold onto. She’s good and she’s kind and she’s not- she’s not a _substitute_  - no one will ever be that and she’s got her own damn life - but she’s got a big enough heart she’ll let Jack hold her tight as long as he needs. Grant thinks Kara would’ve liked her.

He wipes furiously at his eyes and drops to a knee to kiss Jack’s hair. “Love you, superboy,” he whispers. The curve to Jack’s lips might just be Grant’s imagination or it might be from whatever’s happening in his dreams and have nothing to do with Grant at all, but it warms him through all the same.

Maybe he does what he does next because he’s just that tired or maybe because he can’t thank her enough; whatever the reason, he drops a kiss on Simmons’ cheek on his way to his feet. 

He doesn’t leave and he doesn’t lay down - tired as he is, there’s nothing he wants more than to keep Jack in his sights at all times - but his nerves are settled well enough now that he can sit comfortably instead of perched on the edge of the coffee table. Jack’s alive and he’s healthy. That’s all Grant’s ever needed.

 


	4. never had a bad plan in my life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Hub" AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I've never had a bad plan in my life!" from safelycapricious

Skye hugs him, which is nice and all - much as he hates to admit it, hugs are the best medicine after almost being left for dead - but he doesn’t let it last.

“You hacked SHIELD,” he says sternly, pushing her back, “ _again_.” His eyes drop from her stricken expression to the bracelet still affixed to her wrist. “ _How?_ ” It shouldn’t have been possible for her to get close enough to any of the Hub’s systems to access them even if she had the proper clearance. How did she manage it long enough to break into them?

“She had a little help,” Coulson says in that knowing tone he likes so much. His expression gives away nothing but then he steps aside, just a little, just enough so Grant’s attention is drawn to where O’Toole is already looking over Fitz’s injuries in the lab, but it’s not just them, there’s someone else and-

Grant’s across the cargo bay in a heartbeat and Jemma’s out of the lab in less than that and then she’s in his arms and this - _this_ \- is the hug he really needed. 

It’s not usually like this. Typically he gets home only after he’s been debriefed and had the chance to shower and clean himself up a little. He doesn’t make a habit of hugging his wife while he’s in filthy tac gear, with gunfire still ringing in his ears and blood still on his knuckles. She doesn’t seem to mind though, just holds him tight and buries her face in the exposed skin of his neck. 

“Awwww,” Skye coos somewhere behind him. “Tin Man found his heart.”

A little laugh bubbles up from inside Jemma, breaking against his neck. He lets her down slow - because she’s tiny and it’s a long way, not because he’d rather figure out how to perform basic life tasks without use of his arms than let her go. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, brushing her hair back from her face. It’s so soft; he always thinks fondly of her hair while they’re separated but somehow he always forgets just how soft it is.

“A little bird told me that my husband and best friend were being sent into the field together,” she says tipping her head behind him. “So I used some of my vacation days, called in a favor or two - Agent Wix no longer owes you a beer, by the way - and got myself to the Hub to see what all the fuss was about.”

Grant silently laments the loss of that beer even while he’s grateful it was Wix. The guy’s got a wife of his own - a civilian, which has gotta be about a thousand times worse than dating a SciTech agent - so Grant knows he can be trusted to look out for a fellow Ops agent’s wife.

“You flew halfway around the world planning to what?” he asks. His hands have moved from Jemma’s hair to her back and he takes pleasure in rubbing small circles under her ribs with his thumbs. Just having her close is easing a lot of the anger and adrenaline he’s been feeling ever since he realized there was no extraction. “Browbeat Agent Hand into giving you the specifics on a level 8 op? Even by your standards that’s pretty sad, Jem.”

She hits him - just a quick smack to his chest, but as he’s still in his tac gear he feels even less of the impact than he usually does. Which is to say he feels nothing at all; he’s kinda disappointed about that. “I’ll have you know I’ve never had a bad plan in my life! Some of us consider circumstances with care and precision before acting, rather than jumping in with no plan aside from ‘don’t die.’”

It’s an old fight between them and at this point it’s more familiar than angry. Grant knows Jemma’s aware of her limitations and will act within them in precarious situations. And Jemma knows - or Grant’s pretty sure she knows - that he’s a highly trained specialist and just because he doesn’t take as long as she does to consider the variables, doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it, he just has more experience making those kinds of decisions. He’s not reckless, he’s just fast, and she’s not a bad tactician, she just exhausts all other options before settling on the right one.

Coulson’s already headed up top, probably smiling all the way at their easy bickering, and now Skye wanders up behind Grant, just a little too casual in her steps. “And how carefully did you consider before you shot Agent Sitwell?” she asks, all innocence.

Jemma pinkens, and Grant’s mouth drops open a little. 

The girls must’ve gotten to know each other pretty well while Grant’s been gone because he’s gotta catch Jemma to keep her from lunging at Skye. “Why you-” She’s so sudden about it that he gets spun almost all the way around while Skye laughs and dances up the stairs.

“I’ve got the security footage!” she crows. “I’ll e-mail it to you, Ward!”

“I’m going to kill her,” Jemma says.

“I’ll run her through extra drills tomorrow,” Grant promises, back to smoothing her hair - one-handed this time as the other’s busy clutching her hip. “She’ll be too exhausted to tease.”

She smiles up at him. “For me?”

“For you.”

She beams. Their relationship almost ended before it began when he clocked a fellow specialist for whistling at the skirt she wore to the office one day. Now she knows him well enough to understand he causes physical harm to others because he cares. And, come to think of it, he’s pretty sure some of his bad habits have rubbed off on her. No way the sweet biochemist he met all those years ago would’ve lunged at Skye for spilling the beans.

“I have to get cleaned up,” he says, frowning at the blood and dirt on his knuckles. 

She leans closer to him but nods bravely like he’s just said he has to go back out into the field right away.

“And so do you,” he adds, fingering the trail of dirt he left over her eye. “So why don’t you come with and you can tell me about this Sitwell business while I get all the places you can’t reach?”

She grins and rests some of her weight on him. “That sounds lovely.”

 


	5. pick me up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Civilian AU. You shouldn't pick up hitchhikers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For wssummer's travel theme.

“Thanks again.” There’s a bit of a strain in his voice as his muscles relax after hours of walking along the side of the road. “I’m Grant, by the way.”

“Jemma,” she says, again in that adorable little accent. 

“Where you headed, Jemma?” Where she picked him up isn’t anywhere at all, just the same barren strip of road he’s been on all day.

“Home,” she says easily, not the least bit worried she just told the complete stranger she found on the side of the road she’s going to her house. She didn’t seem all that worried about letting him in her car either. She’s way too trusting, but it works to his benefit so he can’t exactly fault her.

“Providence?” he asks, naming the biggest place anywhere near here.

She shakes her head. “Just outside Sunrise.” She gives him an understanding smile; it’d be one thing if she was some country girl, but she’s clearly not from the area. “I like solitude for my work.”

“Ah.” That makes more sense. There’s more than a few homes out in the sticks - the big, nice ones with lots of land all around - that have been bought up by outsiders looking to get more for their money. He’s pretty sure there was a thriller writer living in one of those houses two counties over. 

“What about you?” she asks. “Are you heading anywhere in particular?”

He lets his ear lay against the seat and gives her a languid smile. “As far as you’ll take me.”

She smiles back in a way that lets him know she’ll take him pretty damn far.

 

+++++

 

“That was delicious,” he says two hours later. Far, as it turns out, is all the way to her house. This girl doesn’t have a cautious bone in her body; Grant’s got no idea how she’s survived this long. 

“Would you like more?” she asks as she bends to take the tray of tea things back into the kitchen. 

“Oh no.” He splays his hands over his belly. “That was plenty. And way more than I could’ve asked for. Thanks again.”

The pretty blush that started appearing after the first five miles is back. He’s almost certain it’s leading up to an offer of sharing her bed for the night and he’s sorely tempted to take her up on it.

He glances at the newspaper she barely looked at on her way in. If she’d bothered to look below the fold, she’d have seen a police sketch that looks a hell of a lot like him. It’s his own damn fault, he thinks bitterly as he pulls out the thin, multipurpose chord he wears in place of shoelaces. He got cocky and let that Morse bitch get away and now half the state’s out hunting for him; he was lucky no one recognized him before Jemma picked him up.

And all that means, much as he’d like to, he doesn’t have time to dilly-dally. He’s just gonna have to finish with Jemma right here and now before she can get wind of how dangerous he is. 

Trusting she may be, but she’s not completely oblivious. She hears him coming into the kitchen and starts prattling about her work while she cleans. She’s a scientist, not an artist like he thought, and she’s _so close_ to the big breakthrough she’s been hoping for. Just one more test and she’ll have it, she’s sure.

Or he thinks she’s sure. The word dies in her throat when he drops the chord around her neck and pulls it tight.

“It’s okay, baby,” he says while her heels slip on the tile and one of the teacups shatters on the floor. “I’ve got you. It’ll all be over soon.”

He can feel her heart pounding in frantic time with his own excited heartbeat. One of her hands reaches back for him, but there’s no scrape of nails like he’s come to expect from all the others before her, her fingers stroke almost gently over his cheek. She’s giving up, the fight draining out of her.

“That’s a good girl,” he purrs and kisses her temple.

His grip is feeling a little loose so he tightens it up, not wanting her to suffer unnecessarily - she has been unaccountably nice to him. Only when he shifts his shoulders back to pull her closer, it leaves his knees weak. A second later his vision’s starting to go grey at the edges and he thinks, isn’t this supposed to be what’s happening to _her_?

He slips to his knees and she’s still standing, a strong statue for him to hold onto as he falls.

“It’s okay,” she says while his lungs strain like a pair of landed fish. She kneels beside him and passes her fingers, just as gently as before, over his cheek. “It’ll all be over soon.” There’s no malice in the words and somehow that’s a comfort to him. That’s good. He always hoped it was.

He stares up at her with wide eyes, wondering _how_ and _who_ and _why_. She’s _amazing_ and he’s on friendly enough terms with death to know he’s only ever gonna see this one glimpse of her; he wants to make it last.

“If all goes well,” she says brightly, “I’ll see you again soon.”

He has no idea what that means when his heart won’t stop pounding and his vision’s going black and there’s this sound like a torrent of rain crashing over him, but he feels her fingers on his face until the end.

 

+++++

 

“Oh, splendid!” she says the second he opens his eyes. He doesn’t agree, not at all. Everything’s bright and white and the sound of her clapping her hands echoes in his head. 

He can’t move. His hands and feet are bound to the bed he’s laid out on and Jemma’s over him, muttering to herself and writing down notes when she checks the machines he’s hooked up to.

“What?” he asks. The single word tears at his throat so he doesn’t bother with the  _the hell did you do to me_ he’d planned on coming after.

She gives him a sympathetic smile around the edge of her clipboard before going right back to work. “It might please you to know that you are officially my first successful test subject. You, Grant,” she says like he should be honored by the distinction, “are going to change the world.”

He wants to ask how he’s gonna do that while she’s got him strapped to this stupid bed, but she moves to one side before he can, giving him a clear view of the bed next to his. Or the not-a-bed. It’s more like a tube, the kind of thing he’d expect from some lame sci-fi flick. And what’s inside isn’t much better.

If Jemma says more about what she’s done to him, Grant doesn’t hear it, he’s a little too preoccupied staring at the half-a-corpse floating in the tube. Whatever it was before it died, it definitely wasn’t anything human.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this tumblr post](http://www.best-text-posts.com/post/148519751388/clowneprince-just-shower-thoughts-were-not).


	6. collarbone kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S1. The mission, as they tend to do, goes sideways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: collarbone kiss

“This is not good,” Jemma says.

In her ear, Coulson asks, “How bad?”

“Well, according to these-” _these_ being the files she and Ward (mostly Ward) just extracted from Mr. Keller’s wall safe- “the drug has already gone into production.”

“That’s not possible. Keller doesn’t have the funds-”

“Uh, guys?” Skye cuts in. “Guess who just showed up at the front gate?”

Ward shoots Jemma a look. “Someone we know, I’m guessing.”

“And you’d be right. Ian Quinn.”

Fitz groans and, from the way the sound echoes, Jemma imagines he’s put his head on the briefing room table. She lifts the portable scanner over the next page, rushing to get through the remainder of the files awaiting uploading to the Bus’s servers. She’s not truly surprised Quinn is in attendance. Half the guest list for this party was present in Malta the day that Frank-

Well, the point is, Skye was likely to be recognized. And as May won some sort of contest with Coulson - something that’s left him limping ever since they departed the Cube - Jemma drew short straw and had to come undercover alongside Ward.

“So he’s already got a backer,” Ward says over her, returning papers to their proper folders once she’s done with them, “which means that isn’t what this party is about.”

“It’s about finding a buyer,” Coulson sums up darkly. “We’ll have to find the lab, try to intercept before the drug can be moved off-site. Fitz? Tell May we’re on the move. Skye? You’ve got that list of Keller’s properties?”

“Right here.”

“Ward? Simmons?” There’s a heaviness to Coulson’s tone that causes Jemma’s hands to shake midway through her scan. 

Ward’s hand finds her shoulder. “We’re still here, sir.”

“It’s a gamble, going after the labs.”

Ward gives Jemma a thin smile. “You need us to figure out who the buyer is, just in case.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Jemma can feel the blood rushing from her face. Finding the buyer means staying. And staying means more lying.

“We’ll be fine,” Ward says, and she gets the impression it’s meant more for her benefit than Coulson’s. “We’ll make contact again when we know something.”

“Uh, Ward?” Skye says before the communication can be cut. Not that it necessarily needs to be; judging by the interference Jemma’s hearing, May must already have the Bus in the air. In a few seconds, they’ll be truly on their own. “A couple guards are headed your way.”

“Great.”

“Good luck,” Coulson says dryly and the line goes dead.

“Get this stuff back inside,” Ward orders, grabbing the files he’s already rearranged to shove them back in the safe. She flips through the remaining pages, hoping some of it might stick in her memory to aid them later, and then those are gone too, added to the others and sealed away behind the heavy safe door.

Ward spins the dial twice before carefully lining it up.

“What are you-”

“He had it on 31. If that’s where he always has it, he’ll notice if it’s wrong. If it’s not, it doesn’t hurt.”

“It hurts _us_ ,” she snaps. She can hear footsteps in the hall outside. Footsteps that are slowing, no doubt because they’ve heard something or wondered why the light is on in here.

“Bag that.” Ward nods to her scanner before looking around the room. Not that there’s anywhere to _go_. 

While the ballroom downstairs is all Corinthian columns and broad staircases and classic style, the mansion’s upstairs is minimalist modern. The desk is nothing more than three pieces of metal and a pane of glass. The safe is hidden behind the only decoration in the room: some dull, modern art painting that Jemma cannot get to close to save her life. She gives it a firm push and steps back, only for it to swing gently open again.

“Ward-”

“We need an excuse to be here,” he says with an apologetic sort of shrug. Before she can ask what he’s apologizing for, he has his hands around her hips. He crowds her towards the wall, his size and strength sending a wholly inappropriate - though not unfamiliar - note of feeling through her. While she’s attempting to shove it down into the hole it belongs in, he lifts her up and suddenly she’s pinned against the wall. 

“Ward?” she asks. Or perhaps she whines, she can’t be sure.

“Shh,” he says in the same tone he’s been using all night, every time he’s had to stop her from saying something she shouldn’t. 

His rough fingers brush aside the strap of her dress and she attempts to babble some warning about her lack of bra, but then his mouth is on her skin. Her legs curl around his and her hips jerk upward as her head falls back. She grips the back of his neck, holding on for dear life as he sucks a mark on her collarbone. How can one kiss feel so _good_? 

To her eternal embarrassment, she’s whimpering when the door opens.

“A _hem_ ,” one of the guards says pointedly. 

Ward’s forehead presses against the wall over her shoulder as he lets her gently down. “We okay?” he breathes.

The question warms her and she lifts her hand under his open jacket - when did _that_ happen? - to tap two fingers against his ribs. It’s their agreed upon signal that the intimate contact that is necessary throughout this mission isn’t crossing any lines. Though it did - several, in fact - but that’s Jemma’s own fault. At no time in her hasty training for this mission did anyone cover how to handle being more than a little in love with your fellow agent while pretending to be in a relationship with them, and she was far too embarrassed to ask.

It takes him a moment to untangle his fingers from her dress strap and, once she’s properly covered up, he turns.

“Off-limits?” he asks in that same posh tone he’s been using. It’s a little slurred, as though he’s had a bit too much of the champagne.

The guard who spoke nods severely.

“Then we should get back to the festivities, love,” he says and pulls Jemma along with him out the door. She must be beet red under the guards’ stern gazes, which she supposes sells it since neither of them follow. She almost wishes they would, she has no idea how she’s to keep up this masquerade - and she doesn’t mean this assignment - after _that_.

 


	7. more than one kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ragtag" AU. They bring her straight to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "more than one kiss" 
> 
> A slight **warning** on this one. Nothing that happens is explicit, but Grant's thoughts tend that way.

They bring her straight to him, which isn’t much of a surprise, considering. He didn’t make a fuss - he knows how John feels about attachment - but he made sure all the grunts HYDRA sent were well aware: Fitz they can handle how they like, Simmons is his. 

He’s just laid one of said grunts out flat - there’s not much to do while they wait for Coulson to walk into the trap and everyone’s still itching for some action from the uprising, so they’ve taken to fight clubbing it out in the Bus’s shadow. He doesn’t kid himself she hasn’t seen or that she hasn’t noticed. She saw him fight plenty back before, spent a lot of time and energy pretending she _didn’t_ see in fact, and even she’s got enough sense to see it’s different now. He left all his restraint in Providence, left it shoved in a vent with a still-warm corpse and left it there without a bit of regret.

It feels good to be free of SHIELD’s shackles.

So Jemma saw the brutality of it and, even if she hadn’t, there’s plenty of evidence. The grunt’s friends are carrying him out of the suddenly uneven circle of onlookers. Grant’s bloody - from blows he sustained and inflicted both. He’s removed the bandages she put on him last time they saw each other, leaving his wounds from the Fridge exposed. Mixed in with the newer ones, he wonders if she even notices them as she drags her eyes over every inch of him.

There’s something almost erotic about that. Oh, not in her gaze; she’s terrified. But she’s finally seeing _him_. He’s finally laid bare before her. He wonders what she thinks of him.

Unfortunately he knows what the rest think. The grunts are hovering, wondering what exactly will happen here - and at least one or two are already framing their reports to John. The question of the day: is Grant Ward too attached to his cover girlfriend? Worse, has she made him _soft_?

He smirks and comes forward. Blood-stained hands dig into her hair and he ignores the pain in his split lip when his mouth covers hers. He drinks her in, taking his fill after days spent apart. 

She stiffens, but after a few seconds she’s clinging to him, desperate for his support. Only a few sweeps of his tongue and her knees are already weak; he wonders if she’s wet too.

He lets her go so suddenly she’d fall if he didn’t catch her arm in an iron grip. “Sorry, boys,” he calls to the crowd. “I’m out. Time for this winner to claim his prize.”

There are some hoots and hollers, even a couple complaints that he’s breaking the unspoken rule of the fight - winner fights next - for a woman, but no one’s dumb enough to actually try stopping him.

All the way up the ramp and into one of the cargo pods deep in the Bus, Jemma doesn’t fight him once. She stumbles and hesitates a time or two - seeing Raina in her lab definitely gives her pause - but she doesn’t try to get away. Hell, she even moves closer to him when they pass close by one of the scarier looking grunts in the cargo bay. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean anything though. She could be playing this smart, holding her tongue until she’s ready to deliver whatever set-down he knows is waiting on the tip of it. Or maybe she _can’t_ talk. Maybe she was hurt in the days they’ve been apart and she’s choosing reluctant compliance over the embarrassment of miming her situation. Maybe she spoke too soon, maybe one of the grunts who brought her to him didn’t like her smart mouth. 

He tips her jaw up, looking for signs of bruising. Her pulse flutters against his fingers and her muscles are stiff. Aside from his blood staining her lips there’s no sign of damage. He meets her eyes. There’s distance there, but it’s all for show. That’s his brave girl. 

There’s a reason he put the word out Jemma was off-limits. He likes her. Likes her kindness and her goodness as much as he likes all the dark places she tries so hard to keep hidden. Her lingering fear and anger from the Chitauri virus and his mission in South Ossetia. Her willingness to do whatever it took to save Skye. The ruthless fury in her eyes when Lorelei was led away in chains. 

He wishes he could’ve known how she reacted to Nash’s death. Was she afraid? Glad? Turned on?

His Jemma’s got her dark side, same as anybody. She just needs him to help her bring it into the light.

He lets his fingers drift into her hair, rests his wrists lightly on her shoulders so she’s got the illusion she can get away. “You still my girl?” he asks lowly. 

Her breath catches and her jaw tightens. He watches her think it through, tumble the question around those impressive wheels in her brain. She’s had nearly a week to acclimate herself to the idea of him being HYDRA. Probably at least half that time was spent listening to the team excoriate him. He needs to know where she stands, how much damage control he’s gotta do, and that means convincing her to speak up already. If she’s gonna flip out and start calling him a Nazi like Skye did, better she do it here than upstairs where John can hear her.

She’s not Skye though. She’s not the kind to yell and scream. She’s smarter than that, so he’s not really surprised when he sees her come to a conclusion and it’s not immediately followed by a curse. He _is_ surprised when she moves closer.

Her fingers are light on his bare chest, almost maddening. And then one of her hands is sliding around his neck, strong and steady and followed by her mouth against his. It isn’t like their kiss outside. It’s gentler, for one - she purposefully angles it so she avoids the worst of his lip - and the pressure is warm, insistent where he was forceful.

She pulls back, just far enough to say a simple, “Always,” before she’s kissing him again. The promise of her forever, of her _everything_ , makes him wild. His blood surges and he feels almost animal in his desire to have her _now_. She’s kissing a line along his jaw and, with a growl of annoyance, he wraps an arm around her waist and lifts her onto one of the narrow counters on either side of the pod. 

Now that she’s at a better angle, he wastes no time bending his mouth to the tops of her breasts, exposed to the tropical heat. But Jemma’s hands pull at his hair, forcing him back up.

“No,” she says and presses her own mouth to his chest. She finds each of the injuries she treated at Providence as well as those he’s added since then, and applies a balm of soothing kisses to every one. 

He’s half-crazed by the time she’s done, tugging at her blouse and playing with her hair and trying anything to increase the contact. And when she finally finishes and stands straight in the scant space he’s left between the counter, it’s only the weight of her hand on his cheek that stops him kissing her.

“And you’re mine,” she says heavily. There’s an order in it, but no question. 

He doesn’t tell her he can’t be hers. He’s John’s. Not in this way but he’s his right-hand man, first and foremost. He’ll follow John into hell if he has to. He’ll even walk ahead of him to make sure the way is clear.

But his blood is pounding and his heart is quivering and all he can see right now are Jemma’s big, soulful eyes, all he can feel is her warmth pressed up against him. So he says a strangled, “Yes,” and falls into her. Wherever his loyalties lie, he’ll sort it out later, somewhere other than this pod.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this gifset](http://winifredwevansedits.tumblr.com/post/146725592911/biospecialist-ward-x-simmons-agents-of)


	8. 4am call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3x04 (no monolith) AU Grant gets sentimental.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "things you said on the phone at 4am" from aos-biospec

“They’re all dead,” Ortilla reports. 

“You’re sure?” Grant asks gruffly. It hurts to talk, but then just normal breathing hurts thanks to Lance goddamn Hunter so talking’s more of a novel pain.

“We burned the place to the ground. Anyone was faking or hiding, they didn’t make it out.”

Grant thinks of his parents and Christian, of the smoke rising from the vacation home he spent so much time in as a kid. “Good.”

He jerks his chin, dismissing Ortilla. It’s late - or early, depending on your perspective - and after the evacuation of their fledgling base followed by his mission to decimate the Cincinnati branch of the Watchdogs, the man’s had a long day. 

No sooner has the door shut than Grant’s phone buzzes on the nightstand. Four am. Time to take his next dose of pain meds. Sometimes he wonders why he does’t just fire his busybody assistant.

The phone buzzes again, this time with a reminder text from Markham. Right, that’s why he keeps her.

He pops the pills and then sits, fingering the gold band he’s taken to wearing the last few months. The image of those two in bed together leaves him feeling cold in his. 

He dials the number from memory and holds his breath while it rings, wondering if it’ll pick up.

“Hello?” she answers, sounding groggy after only two rings. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he coos, dropping into the tone he always uses with her. It’s easy, not just from practice but because hearing her voice instantly lightens some of his aches and pains - or maybe that’s the drugs kicking in. “What’re you doing up so late?”

She makes a weak sound and he hears interference like the phone rubbing up against something. “Hurts. Bobbi made me take oxycodone.” Her speech is slightly slurred but she manages the word well enough.

“Did you tell her it gives you insomnia?” he asks.

She hums. He can’t be sure if it’s a yes-hum or a no-hum, but given that it’s Morse, he’s not inclined to be generous.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

There’s that interference again and she sighs, a breathy little sound he can almost imagine falling over his bare neck. “You’re not gonna ask.”

He thinks she might mean it as a question, so he answers. “I already heard. The Watchdogs, right?”

She makes a sound somewhere between a whine and a groan. “There was a- a little boy,” she says around a yawn.

He knows. The Watchdogs scooped the kid up right after he went through transition and SHIELD went in to save him. They’d rather their torture subject dead than free, so one of the idiots threw a grenade and Jemma had to go and shield the kid with her own body.

She’s alive - every report Grant’s received since he coming out of his own surgery made that very clear - but debris tore up her back and side. She’s lucky.

“He’s alive,” she says, like he gives a fuck about the kid.

“Good. That’s real good, Jem.”

He closes his eyes, lets the sound of her breathing settle his nerves like nothing else can.

“…still love me?” she asks, so damn soft he almost doesn’t hear.

“What?” He’s getting kind of groggy himself. It’s getting harder and harder not to slip off to sleep.

“Bobbi says there’ll be scars.” She sounds small, scared. He wants to break a window. “Will you still love me when you see?”

 _When_ , like it’s a given she’s gonna let him see her naked body sometime in the future. She really must be out of it.

“Of course,” he says without hesitation. “You know nothing you could ever do would make me stop loving you.”

There might be a little bitterness in there, given that she’s been calling him her _ex_ -husband ever since the uprising - despite, he might add, the complete lack of divorce papers - and claiming she could never love a traitor like him. But if she recognizes the bite in his tone, she doesn’t give any sign.

“Miss you,” she sighs. 

He closes his eyes, lets himself believe it. “Miss you too, sweetheart.”

“How long?” She used to ask him that when he’d call on flights home from missions, too eager to hear her voice to wait until he’d finished debriefing. The truth - that it could be hours or even days before he made it home to her - was always too terrible to voice, so he gave her the best answer he could. He gives it to her again now.

“Soon.”

“Hurry,” she says and sounds like she means it. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Try to sleep.” 

Even with the peace talking to Jemma grants him, he doesn’t sleep. Instead he sits up late, making plans. He made his wife a promise, one he intends on keeping.

 


	9. clenched fists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pre-series soulmates AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "things you said with clenched fists" from aestuummaris

Jemma is happy. And why wouldn’t she be? After nineteen years, she’s finally meeting her soulmate. He’s tall - she’s always liked tall men - and very handsome, even with that scowl on his face.

She frowns, worried suddenly that he’s dissatisfied with her. After all, just because they’re soulmates is no reason to assume she’s his type physically. Perhaps he prefers taller women so that he doesn’t have to bend as much - her first boyfriend at the Academy was like that and it broke her heart. 

Her soulmate is much more handsome than he was.

“Cheer up, kid,” the man in the doorway says. “It’s the best of both worlds and this way you don’t have to worry.”

Her soulmate’s jaw twitches and she has the impression he’d like to say something to that, but he refrains. A good thing, she thinks, considering the fire in his eyes.

“You’re scaring the girl,” the man chides.

The fire dims and the creases on her soulmate’s brow smooth out as he steps forward. “Hey.” His hand moves for her and she eagerly gives him her own. Even through the bandage, there’s a rush of warmth that accompanies the contact. It sweeps through her down to her toes. 

When it ebbs, she’s sitting in her chair again, same as she was when the man - who has disappeared in the interim - and her soulmate entered. Her soulmate is still here, having taken a seat on the edge of the table beside her. He tucks her hair behind her ear and the brush of his fingertips sends a pleasurable shiver through her.

“So I guess that cinches it, huh?” he asks. “You’re mine.”

She smiles, more than a little giddy. “Yes. And you’re mine.”

He smiles, though only a tiny one, at that. “You’re a scientist?”

“A biochemist. Level one, I’ve only just graduated.”

His eyebrows rise, but it’s an expression she’s well used to and she’s not at all thrown by the question that follows: “Aren’t you a little young?”

“Youngest ever to graduate SciTech,” she says proudly. That gets a real smile from him and her pride doubles.

“Damn. Never thought- I’m a specialist. Level two.”

“Oh.” She looks to the hand he’s still holding. He seems to be cradling it; she thinks she should tell him the pain isn’t bad, but she’s distracted by thoughts of his calluses. She might have guessed he was an operative but a _specialist_? The Black Widow is a specialist.

His thumb skims over the bandage and over her knuckles. “Does that scare you?”

“No,” she says quickly. Why would she be afraid of her own soulmate?

He makes that smile again, the little one, and this time she thinks it looks somehow more like a frown. “It’s okay. I’m a dangerous man.” His fingers slide along her jaw, lifting her chin. “But I would never hurt you. Understand?”

She nods as best she can with him holding her.

His hand drops away and he mutters, “Good,” though he doesn’t sound it at all. He runs his hand through his hair, looking away, off towards the door and the two-way mirror. She has the absurd urge to run her own hands through his hair. But her worry is back. Perhaps he doesn’t want her.

She opens her mouth to ask whether he’s dissatisfied but what comes out instead is, “What’s your name?”

His head snaps around to face her and he does that smiling-frown again, though this time there might be more smile in it. “They didn’t tell you?”

“No. I didn’t even know you were coming until-” she nods to the closed door, indicating the man who never introduced himself either- “until you were introduced.”

His entire body goes tense and the hand that isn’t holding hers clenches on his thigh. She hopes he isn’t hurting himself. “They just stuck you in here and didn’t tell you why?” There’s something cold and deadly in his tone. Not that she didn’t believe him before, but now she feels absolutely certain he was correct in his assessment of himself as a dangerous man.

“I was happy to comply,” she says quickly, hoping to ease his mind. She’s always happy to do whatever HYDRA requires of her and it’s not as though waiting can be described as a burden when the end result was meeting her soulmate.

That muscle in his jaw twitches again. “I know,” he says darkly. His eyes slip shut as though he’s in pain.

Perhaps he’s just come from a mission and was injured. Specialist work, she’s heard, is some of the most hazardous in all of SHIELD. 

She stands, ignoring her own aching muscles, and cups his cheek. He leans into her and she wonders - hopes - whether he’s as affected by her touch as she is by his. 

He is very handsome, her soulmate. He may have some rough edges, but she doesn’t mind those. He’s hers and she’s his and she knows now that they’ve found one another, now that HYDRA’s been so good as to bring them together, they’ll be happy.

 


	10. surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another "The Hub" AU. Jemma (and Skye) gets a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No prompt for this one (unless it being Jemma's birthday when I originally posted it counts) but a slight nsfw **warning**. Nothing explicit but it's definitely implied.

Skye tugs at the sleeves of her jacket, trying her hardest not to be super obvious about it. Which, given that they’re in a swanky SHIELD base, means approximately ninety percent of the people in the room have noticed.

“Sorry,” Jemma hisses, coming up alongside her.

Skye smiles. “Not your fault I didn’t have too many business formal meetings to attend while living out of my _van_.” Jemma’s eyes trail to the shoulders, which are, admittedly, a little tight, so Skye nudges her while they move into a narrower hallway. “Thanks for the loaner,” she says softly.

“Of course, I’d say you can keep it except…”

Skye angles her head, trying to see the agent A.C.’s stopped to talk to up ahead. “Except it’s gonna cut off my circulation pretty soon? Yeah, I’m good. Wouldn’t mind stopping at a mall with some of that salary SHIELD’s given me though. Maybe after this mission’s through. What d’you think?”

Skye is talking to air. She stops, spins a full 360, and then back around again to face Fitz and Trip, who have nearly caught up with her. “Where’d Jemma go?”

Fitz’s mouth opens but Trip’s hand lands on his shoulder before he can make a sound. “Oh, yeah,” he says, all false-casual, “an arm shot out of an office about twenty feet back thataway and dragged her inside.” 

Skye gapes at him and, since it’s Trip, he only stares mildly, knowing exactly how much it frustrates her. She looks to Fitz, who only looks helpless.

“So what you’re saying,” Skye says carefully, “is that in SHIELD bases it’s perfectly normal for agents to be _kidnapped out of nowhere_.”

She maybe lets her voice get a little loud. Fitz is sure looking over her shoulder like they’ve gotten the attention of the higher-ups down the hall. Well, good. Jemma just went _missing_ and their team specialist isn’t doing anything except grinning like an idiot.

“You could always go check on her,” he suggests, like that isn't  _his_ job.

Fitz’s eyes go wide and he manages a few incoherent syllables before Skye marches past. She doesn’t care. He had his chance to talk and he let Trip walk all over him. Well now Skye’s gonna do what both of them should’ve done and give whoever stole Jemma a piece of her mind.

This entire hallway is glass, meaning she can see into every one of the offices - except one. The glass on it is opaque - some of that SHIELD tech Fitz could probably explain to her using about a hundred five-syllable words - so it’s gotta be the one hiding Jemma. Skye grabs the door and gives it a firm tug, one foot already lifted to go charging inside.

Her foot lands behind her and her hand drops the door to do the much more important work of covering her eyes. She’s not sure what sound she makes as she stumbles back, but she knows when it stops echoing off the stupid glass walls, Trip and Fitz are laughing so hard they’re sure to piss themselves. 

She hopes they do. Bastards.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Skye wails. She’s been saying it over and over, she realizes. She drops her hands from her eyes to face the boys. “ _Who was that!_ ” 

“Why do you think-” Fitz starts, then has to stop himself as he gasps for air. He’s holding onto Trip’s shoulder for support but he’s still practically on his knees. He lets out a high-pitched sound, falling a little lower as he turns towards Trip. “It’s so much funnier when it’s not happening to me!”

Trip throws his head back and laughs louder than ever before. Skye swears every agent in the base can hear him.

Fitz gulps in breaths and finally asks, “Why do you think we’re called ‘fitzsimmons’ when her name is Ward?”

“That was-?” Skye points to the door and, like magic, it opens revealing a very red and slightly rumpled Jemma. Skye guesses the guy behind her is the man she saw a few seconds ago, but she can’t be sure since his face was kind of hidden by Jemma’s skirt.

“Agent Grant Ward,” Trip says, sounding perfectly composed. “Our Jemma’s much grumpier and definitely not-better half.”

Jemma’s blush gets even worse when she sees the audience behind Fitz and Trip. “I hate you all,” she mutters, and Skye feels a jolt of real fear. Seeing Jemma like … _that_ was bad enough - and _way_ out of line for the prank war - but Jemma’s revenge? That’s gonna be nuclear. Literally. If they’re lucky. 

“Skye, Grant. Grant, Skye,” she says quickly.

Grant gives Skye a brief once-over, decides she’s not a threat, and then heads to catch up with Coulson and the rest. One of his hands rests on Jemma’s back, taking her with him. It is super adorable.

The higher-ups don’t seem as interested in the drama now that it’s passed and their little agent parade starts moving forward again. Good. Because there is a very small window of opportunity in which Skye might be able to navigate her way out of the blast radius of Jemma’s vengeance. 

She hurries around the boys to nudge Jemma’s shoulder with her own. “Sorry for interrupting your orgasm,” she whispers.

Jemma hangs her head and curls into Grant’s chest while she walks. His arm slides up her back and around her shoulders, holding her close. When his eyes meet Skye’s, she gives him a brief thumbs up, and that stone-cold façade of his cracks into a very brief, very small smile. Skye smiles back. Even if it’s just him, one Ward on her side is better than none.

 


	11. tell me what to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma's husband comes for her in the midst of the uprising. It's not a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: ~~"Tonight, in this bedroom, I'm the boss"~~ from thestarfishdancer
> 
> I utterly failed at that prompt but the spirit of it kinda lives on here.

“What do you want from me?” Grant asks.

Jemma should be frightened as he stalks closer, but all she can feel is grief. His every move is so _changed_. She would like, very much, to tell herself it was a mission. Just a few months ago, she thought much the same things she’s thinking now: that he was different, changed by his experiences with the berserker staff. But now she sees he wasn’t, not really. That man, the man she held and comforted in those days, she still recognized as her husband. This man, she doesn’t know at all.

“Jemma,” he says, slowing as he nears her. There’s enough of the familiar in his tone to tighten her throat.

She spoke to him a few days ago. He wouldn’t say what was so important, but she knew him well enough to guess it was an impending mission. He said he just wanted to hear her voice before…

She wonders if he knew of HYDRA’s impending rise.

“What can I do?” He drops to his knees at her feet, tugs her white-knuckled fingers away from the bedspread beneath her. “What can I do to prove I’m still yours?”

Her head shakes without her really directing it. “You’re not though.” He never was. He was always the enemy’s.

But, a small voice whispers from deep inside her, this is _her_ room. 

She’s wondered, ever since the Sandbox was taken, why she was kept here. So many of her fellow SHIELD-loyal scientists were marched to either the base’s meager prisons or waiting quinjets for transfer, but Jemma was separated from the lot of them and returned to her own quarters. Granted, they were ransacked, searched from top to bottom and stripped of anything she might use as a weapon, but that was the worst of the indignities she’s been forced to endure. She would have expected far, far worse from HYDRA.

The only explanation she can come up with is that Grant’s influence has bought her leniency. Her heart somehow both sinks and soars at the thought.

Her conflicting emotions are not helped by Grant’s pressing his lips to her palm in a warm, lingering kiss. Or the way his free hand wraps around the back of her knee, drawing her thighs slightly open.

“Tell me how to show you,” he says, his voice as rough as his stubble beneath her hand. “Tell me what you want, baby.”

They’ve never played those sorts of games, not exactly. He’s often a bit rough when coming home from missions, it’s true, but that always fades as the days pass. She struggles not to squirm under the memory of his hand pinning her wrists together, of his voice - _this_ voice, the one she has to admit now is more his than the one she fell in love with - demanding she hold still, keep silent, hold back, _beg_. 

His thumb sweeps along the curve of her knee, reminding her of what it’s like to have it do the same on her immobilized wrists. Her blood surges as desire sweeps over her. He’s her husband. The only man who’s touched her in more than half a decade. There’s no shame in wanting him. 

But is there shame in wanting him like this? She doesn’t just want the man she’s known for all these years. She knows now what he really is: HYDRA. A liar. A traitor. Likely he killed no small number of her fellow SHIELD agents on his way to the Sandbox.

He was in some trouble, wasn’t he? Before? Agent Delamora called her into his office and was talking about transferring her to the Hub. She’d only just gotten it out of him the cause was something to do with Grant being in custody when that odd signal came over the wire. Delamora shooed her out without another word about Grant or her transfer. When next she saw him, he was ordering every scientist in the base to either swear allegiance to HYDRA or … He never named the alternative, actually, though she imagines his twisted smile was meant to speak for him.

“Jem,” Grant says softly, coming up on his knees so there’s only room enough to breathe between them. “Tell me what to do.”

She licks her lips. He’s good, one of SHIE- _HYDRA’s_ best. But this close she can see the slight widening of his pupils at the motion.

She doesn’t ask for a kiss.

“I suppose my options,” she says, hating how shaking her voice sounds, “are to join you in your allegiances-” she takes an even shakier breath- “or die.”

The warm seduction Grant’s been wearing since the moment he walked in that door falls away, replaced by something bitter and sick. “No, baby. Worse than that.”

Yes, she can imagine.

He holds her hand over his heart and she knows from experience he’s struggling not to cling tight enough to bruise her. “I can’t-” His expression shutters and, when he meets her eyes again, the warmth is back. “All we’ve got is this.”

His heart pounds beneath her hand.

Jemma may not have what it takes to be a spy like Grant or even a decent enough liar to fool anyone above the age of seven, but she’s known him long enough to know when he’s put on a mask. 

Or not, obviously, but she tries not to think about that.

If she refuses his offer, proves that her love for Grant is not enough to overcome her hatred of HYDRA, then she’ll be dragged from this room and treated just as any other scientist on this base. And not even Grant’s influence will spare her that.

“Well then,” she says as her own heart begins to pound, “either way, I think I’d like to forget.” Forget HYDRA. Forget SHIELD. Forget that the man she loved and swore herself to is a lie. She leans into him, lifting her hand to drag her nails along the back of his neck in that way she knows strains at his control. “Make me forget my own name.”

He grins, big and broad like the wolf in the story. How did she never see it before?

“But not mine,” he says and kisses her before she can answer.

She tries, desperately, to defy him. Naming him is admitting he’s her real husband and that other man is an illusion she’ll never see again. But, in the end, she can only deny herself so long.

She wishes she could hate him for that but, sweat-soaked and skin still buzzing from her orgasm, she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to.

 


	12. s1 drabbles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few especially short drabbles that were too short to warrant their own chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're in the mood for something specific: the first is sad, the second angsty, and the third fun. Take your pick.

 

 

 **Prompt:** "things you said while I cried in your arms"

“I’m sorry.”

They may not be the first words spoken since Jemma entered this room, but they are the first she truly hears. She turns her face away from the hateful sight laid in front of her - and oh, that is a relief. Not much of one since it’s still _there_ , haunting her peripheral vision, but enough that her shoulders loosen and her breathing comes more easily.

“What was that?” she asks. The words hurt. They tear up her throat and she winces after they’re out.

Ward flinches in return. His eyes only stray to her for a brief second before landing on … on _it_. He looks like he might be ill.

“I’m sorry,” he says with some feeling, as though hoping to force the words to take hold in her mind. “I shouldn’t have-” His eyes shut and his hands curl into fists.

For a moment she sees him the way he was on the Bus. The wind in his hair and the gun in his hand. The way the blood sprayed out into the open air in a great cloud - it was almost pretty.

Her eyes sting. But she can’t turn away from Ward. The only other thing to see in this lab will only ensure she devolves into sobs. So instead of respecting his right to grieve in peace, she steps to his side and takes his shaking fist between her hands.

He startles - as much as a man such as him is capable of, at any rate - and stares with wide eyes. Her fingers burrow in, forcing his to open, relax, until she’s able to lace their hands together.

“You did your job,” she says, the words coming out hollow for reasons other than her earlier tears. “You did what you had to- had to do.” 

Even as close as they are, she’s having some trouble making out his expression. Everything’s gone blurry and her breathing’s growing ragged.

He makes a noise, one she can’t identify at all, and she feels his free hand curling into her hair as he turns, allowing her to rest her forehead on his chest.

She cries. Again.

On the Bus, she cried in Skye’s arms. And then in Coulson’s when he came to tell her they’d found the body. And then again on May’s shoulder as she watched the procession into this base. With her closest friend painfully unavailable, they’ve all taken their turns, and now Ward is finally taking his. She tries to thank him, but it only comes out as a rather pathetic sob.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “You have _no idea_ how-”

“Stop it.” She breathes deep, struggling to say what she needs to. “You saved him the fall-” She wants to say more, that his bullet spared Fitz the pain Diaz suffered when the virus finally took his life, but she can’t find the words. So she only curls her fingers deeper into Ward’s shirt, pulling him closer.

His heavy breath stirs her hair and his arms wrap around her. They’re reassuringly heavy, like an extra blanket on her bed as fall fades into winter. She understands he feels awful for what he had to do to Fitz, likely he blames himself for Fitz’s death and feels he’s the last person who should be comforting her beside his lifeless body. But that’s exactly why it has to be him.

 _She’s_ the one who failed Fitz. She didn’t see the virus for what it was, costing him precious time and, even when she knew it was a virus, she was incapable of stopping it quickly enough. She failed him. And Ward - brave, selfless, heroic Ward - was there to clean up her mess. And now he’s doing it again.

She clings tighter to him, tight enough she wonders if it might be hurting him because it certainly is her. 

“I’m so sorry, Simmons,” he says again.

She shakes her head against his chest, too tired now to fight him on it. He doesn’t owe her any apology but if he’s so determined to make this right, he can stay. She only needs him to stay.

 

 

 **Prompt:**  "things you said in the backyard at night" from shineyma

 

“What are you doing?”

Grant throws her a smile over his shoulder and promptly feels his mouth go dry. She’s coming down the back steps, picking her way carefully in her socks. The pj bottoms drag a little on the stone walkway and the thin shirt she wore to bed is almost entirely hidden, only a small triangle of pale pink is visible behind his leather jacket. She’s practically swimming in it and it can’t really be comfortable, but seeing her wearing it…

He’s been having trouble, the last few days, thinking of her as _Simmons_ instead of _Jemma_. She’s his partner on this mission, not his girlfriend, not a potential fuckbuddy, and certainly not his wife. None of that stops the note of _mine_ that runs deep through him when she pulls the jacket a little tighter and her ring catches the porch light.

“Phil needed to be let out,” he says, gesturing to the dog rooting around in the tall, unkempt grass.

She stopped making that little frown over the name Skye picked out only a few hours into the mission, but it makes a reappearance now. She opens her mouth to say something, pauses, looks to the neighbors’ yards. Her hand on his arm urges him to bend towards her. 

“Shouldn’t Phil be a little _better trained_ than that?”

He smiles. Phil the robot dog is a new SHIELD prototype, sent to act in place of the DWARFs on this mission since they can’t exactly go buzzing up and down the neighborhood for clues. Phil, on the other hand, can be taken on walks and maybe even run away if they need him to, allowing him plenty of opportunity to investigate and figure out which house on the block his hiding the black market alien artifacts.

Grant slips a hand around Jemma’s hip and pulls her close. She squeaks, but he wouldn’t be able to hear it if he weren’t breathing the same air as her; she’s getting better at this undercover thing. “I saw something,” he says, pressing the words beneath her ear.

Her arms come up around his neck. The tension in them ruins any fantasy he might’ve had that she’s actually pulling him closer. “Some _one_?” she whispers.

“Don’t know,” he says, pulling back just far enough to look her in the eye. Maybe he was wrong before. There’s fear in her expression - plenty of it in fact - but he knows arousal when he sees it.

He slides one hand beneath the jacket, pushing up the thin, skin-warmed material of her shirt (and just what the hell has she been thinking wearing those every night? He’s only human here). Her mouth drops open a little as his calluses run over her baby smooth skin.

It would be so easy right now to pull her closer, press his mouth over hers for a real kiss, not one of those respectful undercover kisses they’ve been exchanging. And then he’ll take her inside, up to the bedroom - their bedroom - and they’ll finally use that bed the way it was meant to be used.

But he can’t. Because she’s not his girlfriend or his fuckbuddy or his wife, she’s his partner and his friend. So he slides his hand back down to her waist and kisses the top of her forehead.

“You’re cold,” he says, emphasizing the accents of his cover’s voice. It’s not so far off from his normal one, but enough that she notices.

She relaxes, smiles her cover smile, and brings her hands up between them. To anyone watching she’s exploring his chest, but it feels a hell of a lot like she’s pushing him away. “Why don’t you warm me up?” 

His grin widens to something that feels foreign on his face. “Phil!” he calls and pulls Simmons into his side to head into the house. They’ll go upstairs, lay down on opposite sides of the bed, and maybe she’ll get some sleep, but Grant knows he won’t get any rest at all.

 

 

 **Prompt:**  "this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" from sapphireglyphs

 

 _“This tape will self-destruct in five seconds,”_ Jemma’s voice says in that crisp, superior tone Grant knows way too well.

“Is she serious?” Skye asks.

“Um.” It’s a toss-up. On the one hand, Jemma would absolutely joke about something like that, especially given that the entire planet is currently in a state of spy-related chaos thanks to SHIELD’s fall. On the other, Jemma’s still kind of mad at him about that whole Russia thing, so…

 _“You’d better run, sweetheart.”_ The recording cuts off, leaving the room quiet enough Grant can hear a faint clicking.

“Yeah, run,” he says, and pulls Skye towards the door.

The explosion is minimal, only the one room destroyed. Once they manage to get back to their feet, Skye whistles over the damage. “Your ex-wife is _mean_. Not that you don’t deserve it. Jerk.” She punches his shoulder, but ‘jerk’ is a lot better than ‘Nazi,’ which is what she was calling him yesterday, so he doesn’t feel too bad. Not about her anyway.

Jemma wasn’t always mean. That came after he broke her heart on HYDRA’s orders. She was hurt and angry and ripe for the turning. And, as it turns out, someone in HYDRA’s upper levels was smart enough to realize that if either of the Wards ever found out that was the _real_ reason behind their divorce, there’d be hell to pay. So those files were classified at the highest levels. Neither of them knew the other was HYDRA until Natasha Romanoff dumped all of SHIELD’s (and HYDRA’s) secrets on the web.

“So,” Skye says, “do you seriously think you and your psycho ex can ‘burn HYDRA to the ground’?” She doesn’t sound all that impressed with either of them or Jemma's suggestion that they reunite to do just that.

He ignores her in favor of his wedding ring. He always used to leave it with Jemma when he went on missions and told her to keep it after the divorce, saying it’d always been safer with her. He thought he was so clever hiding a tracker in his ring instead of hers. But it was the ring she used to lure him out here, to let him in on her plans for revenge. He wonders how long she’s known.

He slips it on his finger with a smile. He’s missed his wife. To Skye he says, “We’re gonna have fun trying.”

 


	13. accident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz's plan is horrible. Jemma's turns out to be worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "accident" from sapphireglyphs for the soulmates prompt meme
> 
> As both drabbles written in this 'verse are short, I'm posting them here together.

There’s nowhere to go. Literally, they’re on the Bus in midair and for the first time in ten years Jemma has no idea what Fitz is thinking, but she runs anyway because he’s told her to. Through the lab, into the narrow corridors between the storage pods - and directly into Ward.

“Oh no!” she moans as he steps off the final rung of the ladder. Fitz’s hand brushes her spine, a slight pull so that she’ll follow. And in a heartbeat she knows again what he’s thinking because she’s thinking it too. The med pod. They can engage the quarantine and the locks will keep them safe long enough for the plane to land. And then - something. She hast to hope for something.

Only they can’t reach the pod in time. Not with Ward so close. He’ll catch them for sure.

All of this Jemma realizes in the brief fraction of time it takes her to turn away from Ward. She follows Fitz. One step, three, four-

“Go!” she yells when Fitz - brave Fitz - tries to let her into the med pod first. His momentum and shock have him stumbling inside and she can only hope he has the sense to lock the door. She turns, stops.

The soles of Ward’s boots squeak on the floor in his struggle not to run her right over. His hands come up to catch her arms, just the way they have a thousand times before when he checked her over after missions gone awry. Only this time she lifts her own hands, catches his face before he can think to follow the direction of his eyes to go after Fitz. She pulls him down in the most cliché method of distraction known to man.

It works - remarkably well. 

Jemma’s not ashamed to say she’s kissed her fair share of men and boys in her time. Some good, some not-so-good, one or two even downright bad. But this is something else.

She kisses Ward and everything suddenly clicks into place. For all she cares the Bus could fall right out of the sky and so long as she’s able to remain in his arms, she’ll be happy to fall right along with it. The press of his lips against hers, the feel of his body, the weight of his hands on her hips, it’s all so much more _right_ than it’s ever been with anyone else.

She breaks away from him, panting, desperate for air and hating that desperation because it prevents her from kissing him again. 

His own heavy breaths stir her hair and he digs a hand into it, urging her to meet his eyes. 

She flinches when she sees him, her fingers tangled in his belt loop the only thing that keeps her from letting him go. He’s HYDRA. He’s the enemy.

And, after a kiss like that, he can only be her soulmate.

His head drops forward against hers and he sighs heavily. There’s a world of frustration and sadness in it. She can’t help but concur.

 

+++++

 

“She needs time,” Ward whispers. He has to know the bunk walls are far too thin to keep out his words, no matter how quiet he tries to be, but he does try and her cruel, traitorous heart warms for his efforts. She presses her face into the pillow, but the sound of her own movement isn’t enough to block out Garrett’s answer.

“Well she doesn’t have any,” he snaps, making no attempt at all to keep quiet. “You said she agreed to work on the GH-325. You said she _begged_.”

Jemma flinches. She wasn’t there for whatever conversation Ward had with Garrett to explain her continued presence on board. She only knows Garrett ordered her put to death for Fitz’s attempt on his life and, as such, the situation required some smoothing over.

“And then she watched her best friend die,” Ward says just as meanly. “How’d you expect her to react to that?”

Fitz is alive. Fitz is alive. Fitz is alive.

She repeats the mantra over and over in her head while her fingers curl into the fuzzy thermal blanket beneath her. Ward told him about Garrett’s order that he be killed and they agreed the safest course of action was to eject the med pod from the Bus. It was built to be dropped in case of emergency situations and to float while awaiting rescue. 

So Fitz is alive.

There is always the chance that some unsympathetic military power will be the one to track the pod’s emergency beacon, but that danger is far less than being actually in HYDRA’s clutches.

Jemma presses the pillow over her ears. She doesn’t want to hear what Garrett has to say. If he’s going to kill her, she’d rather be surprised, thank you.

And, truth be told, she also doesn’t want to hear Ward. There’s a casual cruelty to his tone when he speaks to Garrett, a callous disregard for others. An hour ago, she was grateful for it, as it made it that much easier to convince herself that the Grant Ward she’s known all these months was a lie, a HYDRA fabrication not worth any of the hours of care she put into keeping him alive and well. But now she hates it, hates knowing that such meanness can exist in the man she’s destined for.

Fingers brush her arm and, thoughts of the firing squad still fresh in her mind, she jumps.

It’s only Ward.

“Are you okay?” he asks. He doesn’t sound like the Ward she knew, but he doesn’t sound quite like himself either. She’s grateful.

Such an absurd question deserves no answer and she instead turns her eyes to the closed door.

“He’s not gonna hurt you.” His hands are warm on her thighs, rubbing feeling back into her legs. She doesn’t know when they went numb - when every inch of her seems to have - but it feels good. Far better than such an action would from anyone else. “He’s giving you until we’re settled at CyberTek.”

A few hours, maybe less. She, supposedly, just watched her best friend be murdered by a man she “begged” to spare her own life, and Garrett’s giving her until they land to recover. She doesn’t even attempt to keep the hatred off her face.

“Hey.” Ward’s hand is in her tangled hair, brushing it back from her face. She lost her hair tie somewhere (likely when he had his hands in her hair earlier; a thought which brings on a wave of buzzing shame), and tossing and turning on the bed hasn’t helped it one bit. “It’ll be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

He said the same earlier, promised he would protect her before Fitz would agree to the plan that he be dropped. And even then, it took Jemma’s pleading to convince him to leave her. She would have loved to have gone, to have escaped her home-turned-prison, but even if she hadn’t been cautioned as to the danger of separation so soon after the connection was sparked, she doubts she could have forced herself to go. 

When Ward made his promise to Fitz however, he also reminded him of _why_ he would protect her when only minutes before he’d been hunting them. “She’s my _soulmate_ ,” he said, with such conviction it was impossible not to believe - even knowing him for a traitor - that he meant it.

She still believes it (she thinks the effort to convince herself he would harm her might break her) but she has begun to wonder what “safe” constitutes in his mind.

“You didn’t tell him,” she says. Her words are dull, just shy of being truly cold. As if part of her can’t bear to treat him so, her fingers have begun playing in his hair. Nothing like what he did to hers earlier, but he smiles, pleased by the attention.

“John isn’t a fan of attachments.”

That doesn’t exactly bode well for her, does it?

Ward sits up on his knees, his hands sliding up her thighs to wrap around her waist. Her own hand somehow lands on his back. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “Once you prove yourself useful, he’ll be glad you have reason to stay.”

He may not say it with the cruelty she’s come to expect from him, but he might as well have for how much it tears at her heart. 

There’s a pleasant hum everywhere he’s touching her, one she’s been attempting to ignore, but now she pulls him to her, intending on drowning in it.

He seems more than amenable to that course of action.

 


	14. drabbles (s3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabbles too short to warrant their own individual chapters. All season 3 related.

 

 **Prompt:** "things you said in your sleep"

 

It’s late, nearly one in the morning, but Grant’s still up, reading through reports Kebo’s gathered from men in the field. His people are reaching out, bringing in others who want to pledge allegiance, but it’s slow going picking out the trustworthy from the probably spies.

“Grant.” The soft moan draws Grant’s attention from the English fighter looking to make an impression. Metal clinks softly as Jemma snuggles closer to him in her sleep. Her hand curls on his thigh, fingernails dragging on the denim of his jeans before folding into her fist. He fights down a wave of desire as her face rubs against his hip. “Grant,” she says again and this time it’s a whine.

The pitiful sound tugs at his heartstrings - the few he’s got left anyway - and he brushes a hand through her hair. “I’m right here, baby,” he says softly.

She relaxes instantly but there’s enough tension left in her he decides to push his luck.

He sets the files aside and scoots down so he’s laying next to her. Her face buries in his chest and her hands fist in the softer fabric of his shirt. He regrets now that he didn’t take it off before getting in bed. “Don’t you worry,” he whispers, running a soothing hand up and down her back in hopes of keeping her asleep, “I won’t let SHIELD hurt you.”

She hums, sounding relieved, grateful even. 

It’s not until her breathing finally evens out that he allows himself to smile. He rolls onto his back, tucking her close to his side and idly toeing the chain that keeps her from leaving the room. If he’s lucky, that little nudge he gave will root deep in her head, bring her that much closer to seeing his side of things. If not, it doesn’t change that she was crying out for him in her sleep. Either way, they’re making progress.

 

 

 **Prompt:**  "Okay, I'm definitely missing something here."

 

“Okay, I am definitely missing something here,” Grant says. Simmons tries to step closer again, but he keeps his hands firm on her hips. “Not that the kiss wasn’t spectacular,” he adds with a grin, “but you did try to kill me the last time we met.”

She rolls her eyes - and her hips, he doesn’t miss that. “I’ve changed since then.”

“Really?” he asks, looking her over again. He already noticed the scar above her eye, the thinness to her body that speaks of a very recent bout of malnutrition. And the hands still wrapped around his neck sure do give the impression her feelings for him have changed, but why?

She nods. “I’ve been … transformed,” she says with a tip of her head. There’s something _wrong_ about her smile. On anyone else’s face it’d be fine, but Simmons is all about pragmatism, she doesn’t get that dreamy look in her eye.

“The Inhumans,” he guesses. “You were exposed to something.” He’s got more than one agent who accidentally - or not so accidentally - ingested one of those fish oil tablets. But far as he knows those only change your _body_ , they don’t turn you into a fucking pod person. “So how does that connect with _this_?” He digs his thumbs into her hips, just a little. Her smile grows, stopping just this side of dirty.

“I need your help,” she says. “I thought you’d be more amenable to providing it if you had some incentive.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You were gonna sleep with me in exchange for my help?”

She shrugs one shoulder, careless. “If it came to that.”

Okay … this is not Simmons. Maybe it’s someone in a mask or someone with shape-shifting powers or she’s possessed or _something_ because the Simmons Grant knows would never do that.

He fixes a smile on his face, letting her think he’s more than amenable to the idea of fucking her under those kind of circumstances. “So what d’you want?” he asks smoothly.

Her fingers play with the hairs at the back of his neck. “Gideon Malick has something I need hidden away in his vault.”

“Something you need?” Now they’re getting somewhere.

She nods eagerly and he lets her come closer. “It’s time for him to return home, but Malick’s proven himself disloyal before, so I’ll have to bring him myself.”

“Bring who?”

“HYDRA’s god,” she says like it’s not the most patently absurd thing in the world. “He set me free and, when he comes back, he’ll free the whole world.”

She leans in, but he holds her back, just a little; he’s gotta know. “Free from what?”

She frowns like she never really considered it before, but then her face clears in a broad grin. “Humanity,” she says and Grant’s so damn shocked he doesn’t stop her kissing him again.

 

 

 **Prompt:**  "if you believe in nothing else, believe in this: everyone lies" from sapphireglyphs

 

“If you believe in nothing else, believe in this: _everyone_ lies.” Grant waits a beat, watches the hope that she’ll get a straight answer out of him fade from Skye’s eyes before walking away.

Not that he’s got far to go. He can’t even make it four steps before he’s at the wall of this damn cell, but turning and lounging against it is a pretty good taunt. It’s not like he’s got any hope of playing repentant this time around. He _built his own HYDRA_ , no way they’d believe he’s guilty for the association now. So that means he’s got time to kill while he waits for rescue and he might as well enjoy himself.

“Just tell me where she is!” Skye demands. She’s on her feet now, fist shaking at her side. 

Grant shrugs carelessly. “Or what? You’ll torture it out of me? Probably should leave that to Morse, she’s got experience with that sort of thing.”

Her hand comes up and he tenses. He’s seen that move, seen it throw men right off their feet in the Arctic. She uses it on him while he’s in here, he’s a whole lot of fucked.

But no impact comes and slowly - very slowly - her hand lowers again. 

“What are your orders?” she asks. “If something happens to you, what are your men supposed to do with Simmons?”

He considers saying something crass to that but the idea of his men doing _anything_ to Jemma in his absence is enough to burn. “Get her out if she’s in danger,” he says, deciding to be honest despite - or maybe because of - his earlier warning to her, “keep her safe.”

“Keep her prisoner, you mean,” Skye mumbles and falls back into her chair. 

Grant only grins and decides, on a whim, to go whole hog. He’s being lying to them about Jemma for months, filling their heads with all sorts of disgusting little lies. It’s about time they heard the truth.

“Jemma’s no prisoner,” he says. “My men’ll protect her and treat her with respect while I’m gone, hell, they might even follow her orders. And yeah, part of it’s because I’m fucking her, but most of it? It’s because she’s _nice_ to them. She gossips with Aldridge and helps my secretary hide her little office affair with my second and is on her way to making Ortilla the perfect sandwich.”

Skye’s face is priceless; really, it is. She looks like someone just told her Santa Claus isn’t real.

“Oh, come on, Skye,” he snaps. “She’s the smartest person either of us know, do you honestly think I could’ve kept her locked up all this time? You wanted the truth? Well here it is: Jemma’s with me because she _wants_ to be.”

She stands, stiff like a marionette, and for a second he worries she’s gonna use her powers for real this time. “You’re right,” she says coldly, “everyone lies.”

He only smiles while she opaques the barrier between them, then he settles down on the cold floor to wait. Markham and the rest will be here soon, and then he’ll get home to Jemma.

 


	15. you're trying to seduce me (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant finds Skye cornering a Centipede scientist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “You’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”

Grant’s just cleared lab C and is heading for D when he hears Skye’s voice, shaky in the quiet of the abandoned facility. “Y-you’re trying to seduce me,” she says. “Aren’t you?” She sound so confused Grant almost barks out a laugh, but as that would give away his position, he keeps it locked down.

“Maybe I am,” a coy, feminine voice responds and Grant’s good humor evaporates. He’s down the hall and at the open doorway before she asks, “Is it working?”

Skye grips his night-night gun tighter, just the way Grant was coaching her on this morning. Under the circumstances, Grant’s less than pleased to see the lesson’s sunk in. 

“ _No_ ,” she says coldly. “You’re under arrest. If the Clairvoyant’s got some sort of hold on you, SHIELD will provide protection.”

The woman she’s aiming at - a doctor from the looks of her - tips a fond smile her way. She’s packing up vials and equipment, not at all concerned with the pistol being aimed at her or SHIELD’s presence in general. “That’s very sweet,” she says, “but I have all the protection I require against my employer, don’t you worry.” She shoulders the bag she’s just finished zipping up.

“Hey!” Skye snaps so loudly it actually draws all her attention and Grant’s heart leaps into his throat at the way the night-night gun wavers. “Put that down! I told you, you’re under-”

“Skye?” Grant asks, stepping inside and lifting his own gun to aim at the woman. Where she was dismissive of Skye, her eyes flash at being cornered by a more capable opponent. 

“Ward,” Skye sighs in relief. “I caught this one trying to escape.”

“Good job. Your comm still down?”

She lowers her gun and gives the woman her side while she checks. The woman’s mouth turns down in disgust and she throws Grant a _seriously?_ look. It’s definitely making Grant’s list of his top ten most embarrassing moments on the team.

“Yeah,” Skye says finally.

“Why don’t you go back the way I came in? It should still be clear. You can tell the others about Little Miss Frankenstein here and help Fitz get that interference sorted out.”

“You sure?” She eyes the doctor warily.

“I think I can handle her,” Grant says dryly. She’s five foot nothing and has obviously never taken more than a cursory self-defense course; she’s not exactly much of a threat.

“Right.” Skye takes off and Grant listens carefully to her retreating footfalls. The doctor isn’t nearly so concerned and comes right around her lab bench to approach him.

She nods at the night-night gun. “You want to stop aiming that at your _wife_?” she asks.

He holsters it. There are a lot of questions on his own mind - not the least of which being what she thought she was doing _seducing_ Skye. Whether it was personal, aimed at him or nothing more than her standard method of getting out of trouble, he doesn’t have time to get in a fight over it right now, so he asks the important question. “What are you doing here, Jem?”

She gestures at the lab. “I _was_ working. Now I’m just trying to save my research before bloody _SHIELD_ can destroy it all.”

He grips her arm - not as tight as he’d like, not tight enough to bruise, but enough she knows he’s pissed. “The soldiers have orders to get you out in case of attack.” It’s not the standard fallback the order to protect John is, but every soldier based with Jemma knows that if the facility comes under attack, she’s priority one - after John of course.

Her annoyed expression freezes, and he knows whatever’s about to come next, he’s not gonna like it.

“Right,” she says slowly, her eyes trailing to the far door of the room. “Them.”

Grant moves his hand to her shoulder and uses her to balance himself while he leans to one side to see what looks like a pile of dead Centipede soldiers. “ _Jemma_ ,” he growls.

“What? It’s not as though it’s _difficult_ to isolate the signal that activates the kill switch. And they were trying to stop me saving _months_ of research.” She inches closer and her hand lands on the top edge of his tac vest, just high enough her fingers brush the exposed skin of his neck. The light contact sends a rush of fire along his nerves. God, he’s missed her. “Are you really telling me their lives are more important?”

He sighs. No, they both know he won’t. He settles for rubbing his hands up and down her arms and bending low enough he can drink in the familiar smell of her shampoo. “ _Your_ life is important to _me_ ,” he says. “Next time, order one of the Incentives assets to pack up, okay?”

“They’re so _jumpy_ ,” she whines. She’s always complained about them as lab assistants, apparently they have a habit of dropping things.

“I _don’t care_.” He’s so firm about it that she startles. He pulls her in close and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I need you safe, Jem. I can’t worry about John _and_ you.”

She nods against his lips. “All right. So long as you promise you’ll come home soon.”

He allows himself a moment to smile, pained, before pushing her away to unholster his night-night gun again. “I’ll come home,” he promises.

“Soon?” she presses and the hopefulness in it cracks something inside him.

He hands her the gun and pulls the keys from one of his pockets. “SHIELD sent back-up on this one. Agent Blake’s all alone monitoring the situation from a van at the east entrance. You knock him out, you’ll have a clear path to take the bike parked next to the van.”

“I assume SHIELD has a GPS on it?”

Grant shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way around that.” The obvious pride in his voice brings a smile to her lips and he’s glad, he sees her rarely enough he cherishes every one of her smiles.

She lifts the gun to his shoulder and he shakes his head, tapping at the center of his chest. “Nu-uh. The charge on that thing’s calibrated for one of the soldiers. You want a husband who doesn’t stutter, you hit me here.”

She rolls her eyes and mutters something under her breath about electricity being a cheap method of incapacitation. It’s the last thing he hears before he wakes up back on the Bus with Skye hovering over him.

And that reminds him of his unanswered questions regarding Jemma’s attempted seduction. That’s gonna bug him for a _while_.

 


	16. you're trying to seduce me (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to the previous drabble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "revengence" for Jemma from sapphireglyphs

Grant reluctantly joins the others in the cargo bay when it comes time to say their goodbyes to Sif. May’s taken her time with making a landing for the send-off. By now a lot of interested parties are gonna know there are a couple of Asgardians on Earth and since both of the team’s heavy hitters just kicked the shit out of each other, they’d like to avoid walking into an ambush.

So it’s a little disheartening when the cargo ramp lowers and a line of eight men is waiting. Each is big, strong, and has the glow of the Centipede implant on their forearms. And in the middle of the line, so small next to them Grant would miss her if she were anyone else, is his fucking wife.

“What is this?” Sif asks, descending the ramp without the least hesitation. So much for the battle-hardened warrior, she can’t even see the danger right in front of her.

“Bad news,” May mutters. She’s already moved to the far end of the ramp from Sif, recognizing the soldiers as more of a threat than the sorceress on a leash.

“Hello,” Jemma says, gracing Coulson with her brightest smile, the one she uses when she’s genuinely trying to make a good impression. Grant’s worry jumps a couple notches.

“Mad scientist lady,” Skye says in a stage whisper. “It’s freaking _mad scientist lady_.”

“ _Not_ a friend,” Fitz says to Sif.

“I recognize her,” Coulson says. Jemma’s good at keeping out of the limelight but after Skye saw her on that raid, she was able to pick her out of old security footage from nearby another base they’d taken months before. Half of SHIELD is hunting for her; the other half knows she’s with them. 

“Something we can help you with, Dr. …?” Coulson asks, stepping ahead of the rest of them as Jemma steps forward. The line of soldiers doesn’t twitch.

Jemma sweeps a look over them, coming to rest on Sif and Lorelei. “I heard about your troubles in Las Vegas, that one of your people was … compromised.” The weight she puts on the word is enough to turn Grant’s stomach. “I wondered if it was true.”

Skye mutters something about Jemma being a bitch and Grant covers up his urge to hit her by slipping her the gun from under his arm. It’s one of Fitz’s modified stun guns, but it hasn’t been recalibrated for the soldiers; it’s the least damaging weapon he’s carrying, just in case Skye decides to take out her aggression on the wrong target.

“I didn’t know the Clairvoyant cared so much about his enemies,” Coulson says blithely.

Jemma’s eyes flash. “I’m not here for him.” She looks straight at Grant. “Is it true?”

His heart stops in his chest. He thought he’d have more time, a chance to start working through what happened in Vegas, maybe kill a few people to get his head back on straight. He didn’t think he’d have to face his wife the _next day_. 

Lorelei’s watching him with a smile in her eyes. He told her _everything_ and she has to have figured out who Jemma is by now. She’s loving this. Bitch.

“Yes,” Grant says and hates how hoarse it comes out.

Coulson twitches, thrown by the vulnerability Grant can’t keep out of his tone. He can’t hide himself from Jemma, he refuses to. If he does that - even when he’s undercover - he’s treating her no better than a mark and she deserves more of him than that.

Jemma’s smile shifts to one Grant’s a lot more familiar with. This is the one that comes out when she’s decided one of her lab assistants is going to become a test subject and she’s just circling around, waiting for the time to strike. 

Almost faster than Grant can track - and definitely faster than Coulson can stop - her arm shoots out. Lorelei makes no sound with the collar silencing her, but that’s a mercy on all of them because whatever sound people make when their bodies slowly turn into a pile of steaming black tar is probably a bad one.

Grant kinda wishes he could hear it.

“What have you done?” Sif demands. Grant hopes the half-step he takes forward looks more like a threat to Jemma than the defense it is.

“What you lot were too noble and moral to,” Jemma snaps, saying the virtues like they’re four-letter words. “You can’t tell me you wanted that monster alive.”

Sif stiffens. It’s not like there was any love lost between her and Lorelei. 

Coulson turns from Jemma to look to Grant. Their eyes meet and, try as he might, Grant can’t keep the satisfaction out of his. After the things Lorelei did to him - the things she made him do - he’s not sorry.

“Really?” Coulson asks, looking to Jemma again. “You tracked us, came all this way … just to kill her? Why?”

Jemma lifts her chin. “I’m very possessive-” her eyes flicker to Grant- “even of my enemies. You should be grateful.”

She turns, heading back to her line of soldiers.

“That’s it?” Skye demands. “You’re not going to attack us or- or something?”

Jemma shoots her a grin over her shoulder. If she was going to say something in response, catching Grant’s eye stops her. Her smile turns sad in the brief moment before she turns away again.

Grant  waits until she and the soldiers have disappeared into the vans they took out here, and then takes one last look at the stain that was Lorelei before turning into the Bus. No one stops him and he’s grateful. It takes all his self-control to keep his smile hidden until he’s safely inside his bunk. 

His wife loves him, enough to commit violent, horrible murder for him. And yeah, they’re gonna have words next time they talk about putting herself in danger over him, but for right now? He’s decided to just enjoy it.

 


	17. cozy night in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SHIELD found them today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "a cozy night in"

The curtains are thin, letting in plenty of moonlight to see by. Not that Grant particularly needs to see. It’s just him and Jemma, and in the last few months he’s learned plenty to navigate her body by touch alone.

She’s especially needy tonight. Tore off his shirt the second he sounded the all-clear on this motel room. Hasn’t left his lap even though they finished nearly ten minutes ago now. She’s scared, but then he is too.

SHIELD found them today.

He turns his palms on her hip bones, letting his fingers trace the curves of her ass. She curls deeper into his chest, humming happily. Her forehead is cool where it lands on his collarbone.

“You’re cold,” he says, nudging her up. “You need-”

“No.” She presses closer to him, shaking her head so her hair tickles his skin. “Not yet.”

He runs a hand up her back, counts her vertebrae. “You didn’t finish earlier.” SHIELD interrupted them. He was already done, but she was in the middle. “If you don’t eat soon…”

They both know what happens then. Grant wasn’t there when she was changed, but he imagines Whitehall took at least as much perverse joy walking her through her new reality as he did with Grant. Turns out the sick son of a bitch was a for real vampire. No blood or fangs - and it certainly didn’t take a wooden stake to kill him - but he did suck the life out of people. Including the two of them, a special punishment for a couple of traitors.

Afterward, Grant was barely alive. Whitehall only needed to take someone every few years, but Grant needs to eat all the time. For months he was kept on a short leash, trading loyalty for fresh bodies. 

And the alternative? Whitehall kept that in the basement. They looked like people, more or less, but they were emaciated and mindless in their hunger. When Grant and Jemma eat, they leave the body. Dried up with no life left in it, yeah, but it’s there. Those poor bastards Whitehall kept caged beneath his base? They ate _everything_.

He doesn’t wanna see that happen to Jemma.

“SHIELD will hear and they’ll come,” she says while her hands play unfair games across his ribs. “I’ll last a while longer.”

He slides a hand into her hair, holding her so she has to look at him. Her cheeks haven’t sunken in yet, but he thinks he might be able to see hunger hovering at the corners of her eyes. 

“Jem,” he starts but she cuts him off.

“Please.” She lets her breasts brush his chest. Cheater. “First thing in the morning. I’ll eat that night manager when he clocks out.”

Grant was hoping to kill the guy himself, but he’s gotta admit he finds the idea of Jemma doing it hot. And it would serve the pervert right, killed by the woman he was leering at.

She’s taken to this half-life of theirs slowly, but she _is_ taking to it. That she ran from SHIELD today proves that. 

Whitehall would probably be proud of how far she’s turned. Grant would be too, if he wasn’t too busy being happy she’s his. When he saw the others there today, he really thought that she’d… But she didn’t. She’s here. With him. And she’s only asking to stay a little while longer before they let the world back in.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, we’ll wait.”

She smiles and curls into his chest. He holds her tight, lending her his warmth until sunlight streams through the curtains.

 


	18. more than anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-s1 AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "we’re in a dysfunctional, toxic relationship but i still love you more than anything in this world" sex
> 
> (sfw)

He pauses when he exits the bathroom, looking almost surprised to see her still here, then calmly resumes running the towel over his hair. He’s trimmed it somewhat, made it less unruly so that she no longer aches to reach out and pluck the wayward strands, but he hasn’t bothered to shave the “Unabomber beard,” as Skye called it. It makes his eyes seem darker as they trace over her, more frightening.

“Why?” he asks. The succinct question seems almost an afterthought as he steps over to the dresser where he dropped his duffel earlier. She can imagine what’s in it, what sorts of things a man of his skills would keep hidden in a remote bus station locker, but she hasn’t looked. She’s remained right here on the bed ever since finishing her own shower. 

She tightens her arms around her knees. “Why what, precisely?” It’s a cowardly question. He can only have meant one thing: why did she betray SHIELD for him?

His mouth curls up on one side. The smirk is just another in a long line of evidence that this man is not the man she knew on the Bus.

It is also evidence that the reason for her betrayal was based on faulty evidence. She’s been played.

But worse is the knowledge that, had she known, it might not have changed a thing.

“I thought your life was in danger,” she says to a patch of carpet near the door. 

His feet enter her field of vision first, then the towel wrapped around his waist, and then he’s sitting beside her on the bed. He draws his fingers through her still-drying hair, under her chin, forcing her to look up at him over the long line of his bandaged arm.

She can’t help but touch it, run her fingertips lightly over the flesh she stitched back together only a few days ago.

“It was,” he says. “How long do you think it would’ve taken Coulson to get tired of seeing my face every day?”

As he’s already grown quite tired of it, likely not long at all. 

He makes a soft noise as tears well in her eyes - she should _not_ be crying over him, but then she shouldn’t be in this situation at all so it’s rather like comparing a candle to a bonfire. His hand digs into her hair, kneading gently but not pulling her closer as she craves.

“I nearly killed Fitz,” he says. He says it calmly, without emotion. She thinks it would have been better if he had shouted it, it wouldn’t feel so like a stake through her heart. “I kidnapped Skye. I was complicit in her being shot - and in Coulson’s kidnapping. I killed Hand and Koenig and dozens of agents at the Fridge.”

Her eyes are shut but tears are still leaking out. He’s a _monster_.

“Why are you here?”

She grips his elbow, above the line of stitches, and forces herself to open her eyes and face what she’s done. “Because I can’t stop loving you, no matter how hard I’ve tried.” She manages not to openly sob any of the words, but it’s a near thing. 

He smiles, big and broad. She wonders if this is how Little Red Riding Hood felt.

His other hand rests beneath her jaw and he pulls her to him for a kiss. It isn’t the kiss she spent long months on the Bus dreaming of because he isn’t that man. This kiss is rough and demanding, it burns through her as much as the scrape of his beard burns her skin.

He turns them, laying her out along the pillows and climbing atop her. He’s heavy and firm, big enough to drown her. 

He nearly did once.

That doesn’t stop her gasping in pathetic desire when he breaks the kiss or have her taking advantage of his obvious offer of an out. His hesitation is her last chance to say no, to gather up her clothes and return to the Playground in shame.

If she claimed temporary insanity, told them he’d gotten into her head and manipulated her into it, they’d be angry but they’d take her back. She knows they would.

She presses her hands over his cheeks, feeling the shape of his face through the beard. She meant what she said: she loves him too much to turn back now.

 


	19. he's dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2x03 Making Friends and Influencing People AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt.

“The next time he touches you, he’s dead.”

“Grant…” Jemma says carefully. His voice has hit that dangerously low register that means violence is imminent, and while such a tone is understandable given that he just arrived to find her running from a killer (and how is he even _here_? he’s supposed to be on the other side of the globe), the _direction_ of that tone is problematic.

He tears his eyes away from Bakshi’s back to smile at her. For a brief, terrible moment, it reminds her of the security footage she saw of Garrett’s final altercation with Coulson, Fury, and Mike. But then his thumb brushes her cheek and he speaks, his tone markedly gentler than it was. “Don’t worry. I know how to make it look like an accident.”

A breath shudders out of her and any further thoughts on that subject are chased right out of her head because she can _see_ her breath.

Grant’s gentleness fades, replaced by that steely attitude he takes whenever he’s working. “We’ve got incoming!” he says, pitching his voice towards Bakshi and the soldiers clustered around him. He pushes Jemma towards them. “Get them out of here,” he orders, stepping back towards the icy hallway Jemma left behind only moments ago.

“Grant,” Jemma says again as a firm hand wraps around her upper arm. It comes out slightly strangled by her fear, by the memories of what Donnie did to those poor men below decks. 

He waves her off and she just catches a glimpse of him pulling his gun from the back of his jeans before she’s dragged off. 

For all the soldiers came here under Bakshi’s command, they don’t seem to have any problem taking orders from Grant now that he’s arrived. She has the sudden urge to ask if they feel like the rope in a tug-of-war as well or if this shift in hierarchy is the natural result of the danger they’re currently in. For her, it has nothing to do with where they are or what’s happening, it never ends. Bakshi keeps her late at the office and pushes her and imposes on her, while Grant pulls her into storage closets in the middle of the work day and very publicly parades around with one arm around her shoulders just so everyone - meaning Bakshi - can see she’s his. 

She thought, when Grant first appeared on base, that the safest course of action (short of running for her life back to the Playground) would be to convince him she turned to HYDRA due to her embarrassing crush on him. And it’s worked. Remarkably well, given that she now spends more nights in his bed than her own. 

However, Bakshi, who never even looked at her twice before Grant arrived, now takes every opportunity available to make her life miserable. Which, she imagines, is how she’s ended up trapped on a ship with Donnie Gill attempting to kill her.

Donnie isn’t the only problem though. Oh no. SHIELD is here. And, as her assignment is classified at the highest levels, any run-of-the-mill agents present will see her as just another HYDRA traitor. So, despite her better instincts, she sticks close to the soldiers and to Bakshi, who appears wholly unruffled ahead of her.

“Ah, that’s disappointing,” he says blandly as they reach the upper deck. 

Donnie has somehow beaten them here and is fighting off several SHIELD agents. Jemma lifts one harm to shade her eyes as she scans the deck, searching for some sign of-

Skye. She’s above them, aiming a sniper rifle at Donnie but refusing to take a shot lest she injure her fellow agents. As if Jemma’s attention is enough to distract her, their eyes meet and Jemma knows, all at once, that Skye knows she’s undercover. Whether she knew it before this mission, Jemma has no idea, but she does know that rifle isn’t being aimed at her - or even really at Bakshi.

She pushes him out of the way of the bullet that lands harmlessly in a crate a few feet away. And that seems to have ruffled him - the pushing, not the mortal danger, he would never be so plebeian as to openly fear for his life. 

“I suppose that answers the question of your loyalties,” he says tightly while he straightens his coat. Behind them, heavy gunfire has entered the mix and Jemma just catches a glimpse of Skye darting for cover along with another agent.

“I don’t know why it was up for debate.” At the sound of Grant’s voice, some of the fear in Jemma’s gut unknots. He’s safe. Donnie didn’t kill him. 

And she’s grateful because it means _she’s_ safe. Because Grant’s survival protects her cover. She would never be truly relieved that a murderer had survived, especially when the only way he could have done it would be to have successfully activated whatever programming HYDRA beat into poor Donnie’s brain. How could she ever be truly thankful for such a thing?

He grabs her when she turns to face him and pulls her to him in a deep, possessive kiss. It’s precisely the sort of thing she’s come to expect when they’re in Bakshi’s presence - or when they’ve just left it - but there’s more to it now, more heat and passion and want. His hand twists just shy of painfully in her hair and the hard planes of his tac vest might leave bruises if he didn’t release her after only a few seconds.

“Don’t you ever do something so stupid again,” he cautions and, though his eyes are on her, she can’t help but think the words are meant for their audience. When she dares look away - only because Grant tucks her into his side to walk them off the boat - she catches Bakshi’s slight nod. She’s been brought out here as part of the never-ending struggle for power between the two of them and, if she’s read things correctly, Grant has just made it clear that such a threat to her life crossed a line. And Bakshi agreed. For some reason.

Jemma’s head hurts. She leans into Grant, too tired of danger and silly male posturing to bother caring. She’s survived the day and passed Bakshi’s test and now will be taking comfort in her boyfriend, murderous traitor that he may be. She deserves it.

 


	20. book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S1 Bus days AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: book from aos-biospec over on tumblr. Definitely a little nsfw.

Grant’s reading. Or trying to. Skye’s idea of cleaning the kitchen involves playing obnoxious garage band music and dancing around the lounge. Every so often, she’ll sing along - or he thinks she is, he can’t tell what anyone’s saying well enough to know if what she's saying matches what's pulsing from the speakers - clearly directing the words at him like she expects him to join in. 

There’s part of him says retreat is the wisest course. His bunk would drown out the worst of the noise and he’s got his own music he could play in there. Or he could head downstairs. The lab wouldn’t be quiet, but Fitz and Simmons’ chatter would more easily dissolve into white noise and they wouldn’t mind him stealing a stool. He’s done it before, and the only price was letting Simmons put a blood pressure cuff around his arm and poke him a couple times. 

Of course this time wouldn’t be so simple, not after today’s mission. He was cut, a clean slice beneath his ribs, hence his reading instead of working off some of the residual adrenaline that’s still buzzing in his veins all these hours later. Simmons would probably start in on him again and then her fussing would turn to worry and in no time at all he’d be shirtless and she’d be bent over him.

“- _and I never loved you anyway!_ ” Skye warbles while the man yell-singing over the speakers says what sounds to Grant like “- _another whore in my way!_ ” He’s sure with context one might make more sense, but given how angry the “singer” sounds, it could go either way.

Grant shoots her a glare - which she laughs off - and shifts in his seat. He’s really regretting the stoicism of Agent Grant Ward. The bastard won’t even take a damn Tylenol without a twenty minute argument. Which usually isn’t so much of a problem, but Simmons was so distracted by her worries about the unknown compounds released during his fight in the lab that she didn’t bother to push it past the two minute mark.

He appreciates the concern - he does; he knows way too many agents who survived the fight but were killed or worse because of what they were fighting next to - but he would’ve liked a little more attention to the actual injury they _know_ he’s got.

So he’s not going downstairs, that’s that decided. He’ll just have to grit his teeth and endure the auditory assault Skye calls music. At the least, he thinks while he flips back in his book - he didn’t actually absorb any of what the last two pages said - he’ll be better prepared for auditory torture the next time he gets captured.

He makes it through half a page before Simmons appears in his peripheral vision, coming up from the lab. He learned long ago not to let on just how quickly he notices other people - it tends to freak out the non-field agents when he does and keeping it to himself gives him an advantage over his peers - so he keeps his eyes scanning over the page while she approaches.

He’s expecting a demand that he come back to the lab for another check-up, so he’s surprised when she lifts one knee onto the couch to sit sideways next to him.

“You need something?” he asks. The pain in his side is starting to flare up again and he’d rather not be making polite conversation; it’s enough effort just keeping from smashing Skye’s iPod.

She tips her head to see the page he’s on. “ _-and the sun hit the snowy peaks, alighting them like golden bonfires, and I knew in that moment there was nothing for it but to drive into the breach._ ” It’s a battle scene - or about to be - but suddenly Grant feels keyed up in an entirely different way. “Interesting,” Simmons says. Her hand comes to rest over his wound, just enough pressure to take the edge off the pain. 

“Simmons-” He means to ask what she’s doing, but when he turns to face her, there’s something in her eyes that gives him pause. He’s seen shades of that look from her, muted hints of it every time she orders him to take off his shirt in the lab or she comes downstairs while he’s still at the punching bag, but never this open want she’s wearing now.

Without removing her hand from his side, she shifts. His book, she sets delicately on the cushion beside him, making room for herself in his lap.

“Sim-” he tries again. She stops him with a kiss.

It’s as warm as her hand on his side and matches the pain there with a rush of pleasure. She kisses him like she’s in no hurry at all, like they’ve got all the time in the world, but she can’t stand to go slow. All the months he’s been stringing her along, flirting in the lab, flashing her his most charming, innocent smile, it all pours right back into him now. He’d be sorry if it didn’t feel so good.

There’s something wrong, he thinks as her hips roll against his. If there’s one thing he knows about her after all this time, it’s that she would never do this. She’s more the burn quietly type. Jumping a guy - and in a very public place - just isn’t her style. 

Reluctantly, he tries to push her back. “This isn’t right,” he says, and even he’s impressed by how steadily it comes out. “You’ve been affected by one of the drugs from that lab.” Probably she got a little ahead of herself trying to see if he was affected and got herself exposed to something. He only hopes Fitz hasn’t suffered the same.

Her hips roll against his, turning her pleasant weight on his lap into something decidedly more dirty. He bites down a groan. “Are you saying you don’t want me?” Her nails drag in his hair. “You know you do, why else would you always be looking?”

He must really be hard up here because it springs to the tip of his tongue to tell her it’s strategic. One woman sits on his cock and he’s ready to spill all his secrets; John would love that.

He takes a minute to swallow the damning words back down, get himself centered again - no easy task with her body against his and her hands in his hair and her breath falling over his face - before he makes another attempt at reasoning with her.

“Ward?”

To his supreme shame, he jumps when Skye’s hand lands on his shoulder. She’s standing next to the couch, frowning at him. 

“Are you okay? You were making kind of an _ow_ noise.” She drops worried eyes to his side, mostly hidden by the book in his lap. “Do you need to see Simmons again?”

“No,” he says quickly. Too quickly, but he can’t care. His pulse is still pounding in his ears and he could swear he can still feel her heat in his skin, everywhere she touched him. If he saw her now - the real her, not some fantasy version - he’s not sure what he’d do. “No,” he says again, more measured this time. “I just fell asleep. Bad dream.”

That doesn’t do anything for the worry lines on Skye’s forehead, but it does get her to back off. He’s shared enough with her of what his nightmares entail that she knows better than to push.

“Thanks for waking me up,” he says and means it.

She nods and goes back to her cleaning. She turns the music down, apparently intending on keeping a closer eye on him.

He goes back to his book. Or pretends to, anyway, he has no idea what’s even going on anymore. Mostly at his point he’s just keeping it open to hide the problem his dream Simmons left him with.

 


	21. boat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate timers AU, set sometime post-s1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the soulmates meme: "boat" from thestarfishdancer

“Ow!” Jemma snaps, more annoyed than in pain. 

Susan, who sat perfectly content while Jemma reached for her egg, decided as she was pulling away that it was time to attack. Luckily, her beak hit only the flex screen attached to Jemma’s inner wrist. She shakes her tiny head a time or two, shocked by the firm plastic instead of the expected soft flesh.

“Yes,” Jemma says, wagging a finger at her (out of her range, of course), “that is what happens when you attempt to bite the hand that feeds you. Though I suppose you’re feeding me at the moment, so perhaps that doesn’t apply.”

She sets the egg gently in the basket, ensuring the cloth laid in the bottom has it cradled safely before she moves on to Gerta and Helen’s roosts. She steps out of the stuffy air of the coop with two eggs, perfect for the hearty breakfast she has planned. 

The wind’s blowing over from the other side of the island, bringing with it the smell of sea and woods and civilization. It catches in her hair and, though she tries to fight it, draws her attention down the path. The narrow path disappears around a bend in the trees, but there’s a spot where the branches sit just right under the wind and she can see the edge of the dock and the sailboat moored there. 

For a minute - sixty seconds exactly - she allows herself to think of the path and the trees, the dock and the boat, the ropes that would need to be untied, the sail unfurled. She thinks about the small island’s coast, how the rocks sit dangerously high along the north shore, but the cliffs there hide anyone from view unless someone’s standing on their edge. She thinks about the fishing village just a few miles away, close enough she can see its lighthouse at night and the white buildings on clear days.

And then the minute ends. She reminds herself of her friends and how they suffered, the innocent bystanders who were caught in the crossfire. She walks up the steps to the vegetable garden, naming with each of them a life lost to Grant’s rage. By the time she reaches the back door, she isn’t thinking about the boat at all anymore.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Grant finds her cooking. He’s sweaty and still breathing heavily from his morning run, but he wraps his arms around her anyway.

“You _stink_!” she laughs, writhing under his touch while her spatula turns the last of their sausage. It’s perfectly browned on the underside, just a little blackened. The air is sweet with it.

He nuzzles her neck and kisses under her ear. “You smell good.”

“I’ve been in the chicken coop,” she says pragmatically, “I smell terrible. But you smell worse.” She pushes her hips back into his to force him away. “Bath.”

“It’ll save water if we do it together.”

She throws him one of her lovingly hard looks. This time it’s his turn to laugh. “I’ll wash outside.”

“You wouldn’t have to-” she yells after him, but he’s already back down the path, heading for the lake. Jemma’s got plans for plumbing, but that takes time and work and tools he doesn’t have out here yet. And as trips to the mainland are limited to when they really need something, he won’t be finishing it for a while.

But that’s all right. The weather’s fine this time of year and a running jump into the cold lake feels good with his blood still pumping hard. 

He dumps his soaking clothes on the rocking chair next to the front door and leaves his muddy boots beside it. Jemma’s just plating the food when he passes by and, if he’s not mistaken, she blushes when she sees him stripped to his boxers. He dresses in a hurry and heads back out, dropping a kiss to her hair as he passes behind her.

“Better?”

She tips her head up to beam at him. “Much.” 

That smile, he’s just gotta kiss. She breaks it in a hurry - breakfast is waiting, after all - and he lets her, but catches her hand to kiss her timer before sitting. She laughs.

“What?” He kisses her timer all the time and she never thought it was funny before.

“Susan did the same thing this morning.”

“Did she?” Susan’s by far the bitchiest of the birds. When the time comes to cook one, she’s first on the list.

Jemma nods solemnly while slipping a bite of toast and egg into her mouth. She smiles. “I think you’ll agree it was worth it though,” she says once she’s swallowed.

“Yeah?” He takes a bite of his own and agrees wholeheartedly. 

They eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, just him and her, the wind in this creaky old house, the sound of forks and knives. He switches to his left hand after a couple more bites and picks her hand off the corner of the table between them, just so he can run his thumb over her timer. Another bite after that, she adjusts them so she can wrap her hand loosely beneath his forearm.

He tries not to smile too broadly. There was a time not too long ago when her line was variations on _don’t touch me_ , now she’s reciprocating.

This little island of theirs might be dull, but it’s doing wonders for their relationship.

 

 

\-----

 

 

She stays at the table while he cleans up, content to watch him. His t-shirt’s still clinging from the way his skin was dampened when he put it on and she has a lovely view of his muscles while he carefully washes and rinses their dishes in two pots of sterilized water.

“Soon you won’t have to do that,” she says.

“Yeah, so you keep saying.”

She huffs and folds her arms over the back of her chair to sit more comfortably while she watches. “I used the last of the sausage,” she says. He grunts, but it’s not his angry grunt. She smiles to herself. “Perhaps tomorrow I’ll head into town.”

He stills so briefly that she wouldn’t even notice if the splashing didn’t stop for that split-second. “Oh?” he asks carefully. “A little early, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” she agrees, sliding out of her chair to come up behind him the same way he did her earlier. Her cheek rests between his shoulder blades. “But I think I have good enough reason. You’ll make a list of the things you need?”

His elbows pull a little closer to his body, giving an awkward sort of hug to her arms around him. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve already got one started for the pipes. And new books?”

“Of course.” They both need a steady supply if they’re to keep from going stir-crazy out here. “I’ll leave first thing after breakfast tomorrow and be back before sundown.” She kisses his back before moving away. There are still plenty of chores to see to - more than usual, now that she’s decided to skive off tomorrow by heading into town. “If you’re lucky I’ll even pick up some Chinese for dinner.”

“You spoil me!” he calls.

She only hums in response. Her hand goes to her timer again while she thinks that she _has_ to spoil him, how else can she keep him content enough that he won’t try to break their deal and run away?

 


	22. it wasn't my idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1x07 "The Hub" AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt from shineyma.

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea,” Sitwell says. He’s trying, bless him, to keep his voice measured, but he doesn’t quite manage it.

“I know,” Jemma says, far more calmly than him. She flips idly through his chart while stepping closer. It seems her dendrotoxin formula shows no sign of lasting negative effects on a human subject - aside from the lingering pain he claims to be suffering in his arm from the injection - good to know. “The whole thing reeks of Victoria Hand. Sending two agents in without extraction-”

“We do it all the time.” This, Sitwell says much more steadily. She imagines he’s had this speech ready for some time, likely for Agent Coulson or Agent May. “It’s not even the first time he’s-”

She bats the call button away from his reaching hand - she’s mildly insulted he thought she wouldn’t notice - and fixes him with a cool look. “It’s the first time he’s had no extraction _and_ an untrained engineer to keep alive. And he had to, didn’t he? He couldn’t lose him the way he lost that doctor last month.”

“No one blames Ward for that-”

“Coulson does. Even if he doesn’t mean to, he does. You know it, I know it, and Grant knows it. And we all know how desperately Grant needs Coulson’s approval.”

Sitwell’s eyes fly to the door. If there were anyone listening - and this is SHIELD, there most certainly is somewhere - all they would hear is a confirmation of what anyone reading Grant’s psych eval would know: he is in desperate need of a father figure, something Coulson hoped to give him by bringing him onto that team of his.

But the team is in danger of falling apart. That hacker Coulson vouched for is on thin ice, having helped a known fugitive escape capture (and having _slept_ with him along the way, which Jemma is privately impressed by) and the medic up and died two months in due to an alien virus, of all things. It’s a beautiful disease, something Jemma would gladly spend the next ten years of her life studying if she weren’t being distracted by incompetents. Like pampered paper-pushers in their ivory towers sending her boyfriend into death or death situations. That he survived is a miracle, but not one that will see her going any easier on Sitwell for allowing it to happen.

What is the _point_ of having a shadow organization within the shadow organization if they don’t use their influence to protect their own?

“The device they were sent to retrieve could have killed millions,” Sitwell says, “on and off the battlefield.” 

Jemma purses her lips and turns away to hook his chart over the end of his bed. That means HYDRA sanctioned this mission. They wanted that device.

But they also want the secret of Coulson’s miraculous recovery from his wounds suffered prior to the battle of New York. And they’re not going to get that if Grant’s dead.

Or, Jemma thinks slowly, perhaps they would have. “ _Grant_ could have been killed,” she says, allowing her voice to drop to the heartfelt tone that so often gains her what she wants from loyal SHIELD agents.

“That was never anyone’s intention.” Sitwell’s voice is shaky again and, when she looks at him, he’s more frightened than he was when he first saw her come through the door. “We had the utmost faith in Agent Ward - and Agent Fitz.”

So HYDRA wasn’t hoping to force Coulson’s hand. Maybe. She’s not about to write off the possibility entirely just because Sitwell claims otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I know you need your rest, but I’ve just been so worried about him.”

He nods shakily. “It’s fine. I’m always happy to help set an agent’s mind at ease.”

“It’s not just this mission. He’s always been a little reckless with his own life, but he knows his limits. Now that he has a team to look after … he needs someone to remind him to take care of himself.”

Sitwell’s eyes light up. “I think you might be right. I’ll look into it.”

Jemma’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out to find the promised alert from the hacker. SHIELD-616 has returned to the Hub and the recovered agents it carries are being transferred to the medical wing. 

“Thank you,” she says, fixing Sitwell with her chilliest smile, “I do appreciate your help. Feel better.”

She heads for the admittance hall, hoping to catch Grant before he’s assigned a room. He likely won’t be able to get out of sharing with Agent Fitz, but he at least deserves a window after what he’s been through.

And, if Sitwell knows what’s good for him, he’ll also be receiving some pleasant news before he’s released. Not only does Grant need someone looking after him, but his team is in need of a new medic, and luckily Jemma fills both bills quite nicely. 

 


	23. mini fics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One-to-five sentence fics written for one word prompts.

 

**burn**

 

When she dared to ask, Randolph told her that the staff felt like liquid fire coursing through his veins. Ten hours later, she wonders if perhaps it’s possible to develop symptoms second-hand, as she’s currently in the middle of rather prolonged physical contact with Ward and seems to be suffering similar effects.

(When she tells him as much, he laughs in a wholly un-Ward-like way and kisses her until she’s certain the fire’s going to burn her to ash.)

 

 

**test**

 

She’s surprised - though very, very grateful - when her interrogation with Bakshi ends almost as soon as it’s begun due to the sound of fighting in the hall. She’s decidedly less grateful when a slightly winded Ward walks through the door.

“Couldn’t even pull off a convincing ‘hail HYDRA’?” he demands while shooting the guards. “What was Coulson thinking?” As she’s wondering much the same thing herself regarding his presence here, she doesn’t bother to answer.

 

 

**sky**

 

“I want you to try not to think about the distance,” he says.

“Rather difficult with you reminding me of it,” she teases.

“Think about the ground beneath your back, not the clouds overhead or the distance I can _see you_ calculating.”

She tries, she truly does, but the truth is that she can’t focus on the safety and stability of the ground beneath them, not when he’s lying on the grass next to her and his heat is bleeding into her side and his fingers are laced with hers.

 

 

 **vintage** (set in the [when](http://ilosttrackofthings.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-who-what-%28when%29-where-why-how/chrono) ‘verse)

 

She laughs and can’t find a way to explain it’s because for all the trouble she still has making sense of mid-twentieth century under-things, he has no trouble at all stripping her of them.

 

 

**holiday**

 

The streets are so thick with bodies that Jemma’s more grateful than worried when a firm hand extracts her from the crowd. And she needn’t have worried at all, it turns out, because in the shadows of the alley she can just make out the familiar lines of Ward’s face.

“What are they celebrating?” she pants; she’s been wracking her brain but she can’t remember any local festivals from her look at SHIELD’s database prior to their landing here.

“Tuesday,” he says with a shrug, and the motion leaves her suddenly aware of his hands still wrapped around her bare arms and the very narrow distance between them. That doesn’t seem like a very good reason at all for this much mess, but … when in Rome. 

She steps closer.

 

 

**animal**

 

“You’re telling me that the staff turned me into a _werewolf_?” Grant demands, a touch sharper than he means because his head is killing him.

“More like a weredog,” Skye says over the lab bench. “A really snarly one -  _mostly_.”

He’s not sure he wants to know what that tone or that smile mean, but he finds himself following her eyes to where Simmons is tutting over his blood sample. Her usually pristine, white lab coat is looking a little grey, like something big and black and furry spent the night curled up in her lap.

 

 

**care**

 

Simmons is shaking in the seat next to him, and Grant’s thinking it’s not just the view. She stares at her fingers and the blood that hit her when he… It’s definitely not just the view.

“How many-” she swallows thickly- “how many more of our friends do you think are really HYDRA?”

He reaches across the cockpit to squeeze her knee. “I’m gonna take care of you,” he promises.

 

 

**alone**

 

Privacy - or close to it, as Ward is remaining behind as well - on the Bus is a rare and wonderful thing, so much so that when he asks what she wants to do with it, her tongue gets a little ahead of her and she suggests something wholly inappropriate and against all of SHIELD’s frat regs.

That Ward is amenable to the idea - and very skilled in carrying it out - more than makes up for having to share her alone time with him.

 

 

**reveal**

 

There’s blood in the water. It falls from his soapy fingers to slip down the drain, and Jemma can’t take her eyes off the swirling red and black. That’s a mistake, as it distracts her from noticing he’s shaken his hands dry until he’s cupping her face in his chilly fingers.

“He was in my way,” he says in those same gentle tones he used when he touched her other ways, “understand, sweetheart?”

She does, all too well.

 

 

**morning**

 

“You wanna talk about it?” he asks one morning after the sun’s come up over the mountains.

“No,” she says and wraps her arms around his middle, cuddling up to him like he’s not the guy she tried to kill eight months ago.

There’s part of him that’s willing to let it go, enjoy her help and her body so long as she’s willing to offer them up, but there’s another part of him that’s itching to know _why_. What happened to her on that planet that left her not only so scared of the dark she’s clinging to him through the night, but eager to help him rebuild HYDRA during the day? One of these days his curiosity’s gonna win out and he’ll press the issue, but with her kissing along the curve of his jaw, it won’t be today.

 

 

**winter**

 

Providence is cold all the time, which is good because so is Grant. John’s dead, killed by Hand while Grant was still knocked out by that bomb Skye set off, and Grant’s been ice cold ever since he heard the news.

Well, not ever since, there are times he thaws: mostly when he’s got Simmons writhing and moaning and begging for more. He can hear John’s voice in his head, warning him it’s a weakness that he curls around her warm body after instead of kicking her out, but John’s dead, and Grant’s too damn cold to give up the only heat he feels anymore.

 

 

**eat**

 

“Remind me why I’m doing this again,” she says.

There’s a glittering table downstairs piled high with a picture-perfect Christmas feast, almost enough to make her forget that the family hovering around it is populated almost entirely by cruel, abusive monsters. The worst of them slides his hands over her hips and rests his chin on her head. “Because if you help me reconnect with Thomas, I’ll stop trying to kill Morse and Hunter,” he says calmly, his low voice reverberating through her, “which is kind of your fault seeing as you’re the reason Kara was brainwashed in the first place.”

Right, she’s doing this because he’s a manipulative bastard. Just making sure.

 

 

**mistake**

 

The problem with annulments - and, she discovers soon after, divorces - is that they’re much more difficult to procure when your accidental husband is head of an international terrorist organization and is, for some inconceivable reason, determined to “make it work.” 

 

 

**sense**

 

It isn’t until Lorelei’s long gone back to her cell on Asgard that Grant realizes her hair smelled like the shampoo they use on the Bus and her sharp smiles always made his chest swell with satisfaction the way much softer ones do when he catches them shot his way from the lab.

 

 

**wound**

 

He can’t stop. Even when he puts the van in park, he climbs right out and around to the back so he can carry her into the lab where Trip’s waiting with a shot of ketamine. Grant waits until her clutching fingers release his shirt and her hand drops limply to the table beside her (Trip’s already cutting her out of the bloodstained clothes), then he’s off, back in the van to hunt down the bastards who did this to her.

 

 

**idiot**

 

“I hope you know, I’d never do anything to hurt you,” he said - he _promised_ \- while he stepped closer in some spare exam room in the Hub. She laughed because of course she knew, of course she’d never imagine that he would be the enemy. And then he proved it to her, proved he could be trusted with the most precious and secret parts of her, and she believed him.

Now, standing over Koenig’s body, feeling like her own is as cold as his, she knows she’s never been more of a fool.

 

 

**perfect**

 

“Exquisite, isn’t she?” Whitehall asks, toying with Simmons’ hair while she smiles passively at him. There are fading bruises on her wrists and jaw, and the light of curiosity that always seemed to be in her eyes is gone, snuffed out by the man she’s letting touch her like he owns her.

“Perfect,” Grant agrees. The perfect excuse to tear HYDRA down around Whitehall’s head.

 

 

**tomorrow**

 

After the fighting stops and she’s safe to push her savior (ha!) off her, the first thing she asks is, “How are you alive?” Which she thinks is rather appropriate given that he had his chest crushed, his corpse possessed, and his body destroyed in a nuclear explosion. But she also thinks it might not have been the most pertinent question regarding his presence here, seeing as he answers it by kissing her.

 

 

**red**

 

HYDRA’s just as bad as SHIELD when it comes to pointless paperwork, so Grant’s triumphant return from six months of imprisonment is interrupted by hours of debriefs. When it’s over and he finally makes it upstairs to the quarters they directed him to, he expects to walk into a dark apartment, but Jemma’s sitting up, reading one of her science journals and wearing a little red number that he takes great pleasure in tearing off her.

 

 

**lesson**

 

In the lab, Fitz is pouting - loudly - about being “abandoned” and Skye is playing Devil’s advocate, trying to entice him to follow Jemma’s example by heading down to the target range set up in the isolated field the Bus is currently parked in. Jemma privately hopes Fitz’s pride prevents him from doing so. While she’s not all that interested in proper firearm technique, she is very interested in the heat of Ward’s chest at her back and the feel of his calluses on the soft skin of her hands as he adjusts her stance, and she’d like to enjoy it in peace.

 

 

**sauna**

 

“Stop it,” Simmons says sternly. Her fingers are busy giving up, swiftly undoing the last few buttons on her blouse so she can toss it away.

“Stop what?” he asks, all innocence.

She glares. “You’re using your newfound powers to increase the temperature in our prison in order to aggravate me. Stop. It.”

“ _Or_ our captors are increasing the temperature as a prelude to interrogation and it’s just not affecting me because of my powers.” It’s a valid theory and her angry huff says she can’t deny it. Doesn’t mean it’s true though. He is absolutely, shamelessly, driving the temperature higher. He just wonders how much longer before she ditches those jeans.

 

 

**uncle**

 

All Grant can see is Thomas, ten years old and coughing up water while he pleads for the rope to be let down. He’s barely even aware of Simmons twisting away from him or the cattle prod in his hand or the terror in her eyes; all he knows is that somewhere out in the world his little brother is being tortured by Coulson and nothing else matters.

“I cheated at Scrabble!”

Grant pauses with the end of the prod hovering inches from Simmons’ skin.

“I cheated at Scrabble,” she says again. “That’s how I always won.”

It’s not even close to the answer he came in here demanding and for some reason that makes it better. The cattle prod hits the floor and Grant follows a second later, laughing until he can’t breathe for crying.

 

 

**mistake**

 

Aldridge is good, good enough she’s quickly become one of Grant’s favorites, and he knows her well enough at this point not to be surprised to find her making out with the enemy. She likes to play with her food, nothing wrong with that. Usually she’s got a good reason - intel or snagging a weapon - and sometimes it’s just for the fun of it. And Grant never begrudges her her fun, not until he comes around the corner of the lab they’re raiding and sees her kissing Jemma fucking Simmons.

It’s been more than a year since he abandoned his play for Simmons’ affections - a strategic move meant to keep that genius brain of hers from catching on he wasn’t the awkward SHIELD specialist he was playing - so there’s no reason his first thought when he sees them _pawing_ at each other should be an almost violent “mine!”

And even less reason he should be turned on when it’s Simmons who comes away with Aldridge’s sidearm, but he is, and that’s why he takes the extra second to pull out his ICER instead of paying her back for that shit she pulled in the Arctic.

 

 

**asphyxiation**

 

The most important thing, Jemma thinks, when dealing with the Ward impostor, is to go along with his lies. Either he’s trying to trick her, in which case it would be best not to alert him to the fact that she’s onto him, or he genuinely believes himself to be Ward, in which case she’d rather not antagonize him by pointing out he’s a complete nutter.

“So why,” she asks slowly, “have you chosen to, erm, _protect_ me?” If being locked in a remote bunker with a madman counts as protection.

“I thought about Skye,” he says, and though she knows he’s an impostor, it doesn’t stop her heart constricting painfully that Skye would have been his first choice, “but John still needs the drug and I can’t-” He shakes his head. “You drowned. Eight weeks from now. And everyone blamed me, so…” He shrugs it off, the news of her gruesome death.

She doesn’t. She tucks that timeframe away because if the team hasn’t rescued her in eight weeks, she can only too easily imagine the direction this delusion will take him.

 

 

**hate**

 

“I hate you,” she says. Under normal circumstances he’d laugh because her hands under his shirt and the way she moans when he bites down on her breast through her bra all kinda undermine the statement. But these aren’t normal circumstances; they’ve been infected with something - inhibitions lowered, libidos gone driven through the roof - and all he can think is how good she’s gonna look when she’s naked beneath him.

 

 

**curtain**

 

With the others all busy working to get communications back up or the van running again (or, preferably, both), it falls to Grant to hold up a beach towel so Simmons can change out of the bikini she wore for her portion of the undercover work. He does not bother to point out to anyone that, given their differences in height, there’s really no way for him not to see, well, _everything_ happening on the other side of the towel. At least this clusterfuck of a mission has a silver lining.

 

 

**cut**

 

“…to change the banda- _Don’t_ do that,” she warns sternly when he starts running a finger idly over the bandage, following the line of the wound beneath.

He keeps his eyes on the bright light overhead. If he lets them slip halfway shut, he can just remember the way it glowed in her hair when she bent over him a few hours ago. And that memory sparks the pleasant one that colored his dreams after she had him sedated. “Do you ever think about Amsterdam?”

He turns his head on the pillow in time to see her skin going the same shade of pink it was when she was beneath him, gasping his name.

“I do,” he confesses, looking to the light again. “All the time.”

 

 

**water**

 

She dreams about bobbing in the ocean with Ward. The sun on her face, the sharp spray against her cheek. _Water, water everywhere…_

She wakes up with sand clinging to her cheek in that never ending twilight and wraps her arms around herself, trying to bring back the phantom memory of his arms holding her close.

 

 

**liar**

 

“Bloom, right?”

Jemma pauses her struggling against the ropes to ask, “Bloom what?”

“Octavian Bloom,” Ward says. “He doesn’t love it the way Whitehall does, but I gotta say the man knows what he’s doing; this has his fingerprints all over it.”

That he’s pointing to _her_ while he speaks doesn’t strike her as promising. “What does?” she asks tiredly. She’s been kidnapped for less than an hour and she’s already beyond done with him.

“The job he did brainwashing you.”

She barks out a laugh before she can stop herself. “You think I’m _brainwashed_?”

Ward sits forward in his chair, an unnervingly pleasant smile on his face. “I spent ten months learning this team inside and out and I can tell you fact number one about Jemma Simmons is that she _cannot lie_. You’re either brainwashed or an impostor.” He pulls a very long, very sharp knife out of nowhere and examines it. “But don’t worry, I’ll find out which soon enough.”

 


	24. one last dying wishing well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3x05 "4,722 Hours" soulmates AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No prompt for this one. The title comes from needtobreathe's The Heart.

If he hadn’t died over thirty years before Grant was born, he’d kill the son of a bitch who came up with the drug that blocks the soul bond. Oh, the bond’s still _there_ , a little cord of some ethereal something wrapped around his heart, but there’s no substance to it. He can’t sense her, can’t feel her feelings, can’t walk in her dreams. For a solid year, he’s been alone in his own body, more alone than he’s ever been in his life. It’s hell.

And then, with no warning at all, she’s there. 

He’s halfway through a dream of killing Hunter real slow while Morse begs him to stop, when light breaks over his shoulders. He turns and he’s in the back of the new warehouse, with the big windows. She’s standing at them, watching the sun rise impossibly over hills that aren’t there in real life.

“Jemma?” he breathes. Hunter’s limp body slips from his fingers but there’s no sound of it hitting the ground. Morse’s screams have stopped too. It’s quiet. Eerie quiet.

He’s had dreams before with her in them. A lot of dreams, to be honest. And why shouldn’t he? She’s been drugging herself to cut him out of her life and he’s been missing her like a limb. She’s his _soulmate_ , dammit.

That’s how he knows it’s really her this time. All those times before, there was part of him that knew it was all his subconscious. If he thought he was feeling the bond strengthen, it was only that: a thought. But this … he can feel _her_.

He approaches her slowly, afraid to touch her, afraid not to. There’s something otherworldly about her now. The way she watches the sun, it’s like she’s never seen it before.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, hoping to coax a reaction out of her so he knows how to play this.

Her expression doesn’t change. She doesn’t move away. All she does is say, “I’m dying.”

Clouds sweep in, dark and heavy and thunderous. That gets a reaction out of her.

“No!” she says - begs, like he’s the one killing her. She fists a hand in his shirt. “Please. _Please_.”

He doesn’t know how he knows what she’s asking him for - maybe it’s the look she was wearing before, maybe it’s just part of sharing the dream - but he focuses his thoughts until the worst of his anger and fear and outrage fade and the clouds roll away and the sun comes back. Jemma sighs in relief. She turns to face the sun and sags into him, her head lolling against his chest. He wraps his hands around her hips.

“Tell me where you are,” he says, pressing the words into her hair, “and I’ll kill them all.”

He can feel her smile in the air around them. “You can’t save me, Grant. There’s no food, no water … no sun.” And, he’s guessing, no drugs to block him out with.

“You’re trapped?” he asks. “Imprisoned or accident?”

Her hand lifts to brush down his cheek and neck. “Accident. But there’s nothing you can do. SHIELD’s had decades to study the monolith and they’ve never…” She sighs, turns her head so her cheek rests against the bare skin above his collar. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

He pulls her back, away from the windows, and she comes without protest. His legs hit his bed and, when he pulls them down onto it, he sees the ceiling of the warehouse has disappeared. She must really be missing the sun.

“I’ll find you,” he promises in between kisses. She doesn’t answer; he thinks she’s pretending she can’t hear him so she doesn’t have to. He makes the promise with touches instead: lingering, possessive pressure on her arm, her throat, between her thighs. She returns it measure for measure, and he can’t help but think she’s wishing she could stay.

The real world’s pulling at him, sharpening his outward senses as his brain demands his conscious attention. She clings tighter to him, pressing every inch of her body against every inch of his and wrapping her arms around his head.

“Promise me you won’t hurt Fitz,” she says, “or Skye or Coulson or May or any of the others.”

Thunder rolls in the distance but there’s no clouds or lightning, only a tableau of Morse and Hunter appearing suddenly a stone’s throw away, in the same bad shape he left them in when he saw her.

She doesn’t even look their way. “ _Any_ of them,” she insists.

“Morse betrayed-”

Her eyes drop from his. “I know.” 

He has no idea what she thinks of Kara - but that’s her own fault, isn’t it? If she hadn’t cut off their connection, he would’ve known every step of the way how it affected her and he would’ve been able to act with her in mind. What was he supposed to do? Wait forever for a soulmate who’d refused to speak to him even when she was interrogating him? For Christ’s sake, she typed her questions on a tablet and made him read them.

“I’m dying,” she says again, meeting his eyes. He thinks it might be a challenge. “This is probably the last time you’ll ever see me-”

His fingers dig so deep into her back she’d be crying out if this weren’t a dream. 

“-so I’ll believe you if you promise not to hurt them. Please, Grant. I need to know you won’t blame them for this the way you do for…” She drifts off and her eyes trail over his shoulder. He thinks someone else appears just past his sightline, someone with long, dark hair and a slightly wicked smile.

Her eyes snap back to his. “Promise me.”

He drags his hands down her back and up again, into her hair. He cups her face in his hands and kisses her, not too long, but slow enough she’s nice and lust-drunk when he pulls back. He sears the image into his brain while he reluctantly pays attention to all the things that’ve been demanding he notice out in the real world. “I promise I won’t blame them for your death,” he says, and is treated to her bright, grateful smile as the dream fades.

He wakes up better than he has in months. The connection’s still there, still whole and real. 

It’s weak though, worryingly weak.

He rolls out of bed while shooting off a quick text to Kebo to get every bit of intel they have on SHIELD’s activity in the last month, no matter how small, and bring it to him. He has every intention of keeping his promise: he won’t be holding the team accountable for her death because she isn’t going to die. He’s gonna find her and save her and, afterward, the team will pay for failing to protect her.

 


	25. you didn't tell me you had a dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Civilians AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "you didn't tell me you had a dog."

The entire evening is going very well, if Jemma does say so herself. Not that she’s capable of it as, at the moment, her tongue is rather occupied inside Grant’s mouth. And, if she’s any judge, the way his hands are dragging over her hips, pulling at her shimmery blouse (she k _new_ it was a good choice; he’s been eyeing her cleavage and her curves all night) and his knee keeps moving a little deeper between her legs with every step they take are all signs that it will go even better in the near future.

She fumbles with her purse and her keys, attempting to find the lock without turning around or even disengaging at all.

“Here,” he rumbles, snatching them from her and making up for the break by palming her breast. It’s only seconds before her door is swinging open behind her and she stumbles, struggling to keep both her balance and her hold on Grant. Both of which become increasingly difficult when a large, brown blur comes between them.

Archie barks joyously, his front paws landing only briefly on Jemma’s thighs before rebounding onto Grant. His head drops back, his tongue lolling out and his eyes looking absurdly manic as they fall on her. He’s trying to find a way to welcome her home and at the same time investigate the newcomer but can’t reckon how to accomplish both at once. 

“You didn’t tell me you had a dog,” Grant says in a worryingly strangled tone of voice. And when another few barks see him backing up to the door, well.

“Is that all right?” she asks. The intruder returned to the hall and thus no longer in Archie’s territory, he’s nuzzling Jemma’s stomach and legs, demanding scratches. If she’d considered it, she might have encouraged Grant to take her to his place for the night instead. Archie would have been fine on his own - she frequently works long hours when on the verge of a breakthrough and so long as she isn’t gone for a full twenty-four, he takes her absence like a champ - but if she were to come home and immediately leave… 

Much as she was looking forward to a pleasant ending to their date, she can’t abandon Archie.

“He really is a sweetheart,” she says, hoping to salvage the evening. “He only needs to meet you properly.”

Grant’s eyes brighten as he drops to one knee. “Hey, handsome,” he beckons in a tone of voice Jemma recognizes as being distinctly _dog_. It’s so different from his typical tone that she very nearly laughs. “You want some of this?” He produces the foil swan that contains the remains of his steak. She promised a cold refrigerator to store it in as a thinly veiled guise to bring him upstairs. “Can he have some?” he asks, eyes lifting to her as Archie moves closer, nose low to better sniff out whatever’s in the swan.

“Of course, but it might need to be cut up.”

“Naw,” Grant says while Archie scarfs down a bite. “You’re a big boy, you can handle it.” Grant rubs a hand along his flank and Archie’s tail flies back and forth in pleasure.

After that, Grant is welcomed into the apartment with no trouble at all, save perhaps that Archie is so fond of him that, even after the steak is all eaten and the foil torn completely apart to ensure no pieces escaped, Jemma is forced to sit a full couch cushion away from her date so that her dog can better snuggle up to him.

Not that she can be particularly angry about that. If Archie had disapproved of Grant, she absolutely would have had to dump him. And that would have been a terrible shame, especially as Grant is by far the most attractive man she’s so much as  _seen_  in the past year and they haven’t even had sex yet.

Which they still might not after tonight, if Archie keeps this up.

“Why didn’t you mention him?” Grant asks while rubbing affectionately at Archie’s ears with both hands.

She scratches his bum. “I don’t know. Didn’t want to come off as the crazy dog lady, I suppose.”

He nods in understanding and, when Archie begins licking the taste of steak off Grant’s face, Jemma decides it’s the perfect opportunity to add in the other reason.

“I bought him with my ex, actually.”

Archie goes on licking, but Grant’s hand has stilled on his shoulders. “That’s … a big step,” he says carefully once he’s able.

“It was,” she agrees. “I think it was our way of trying to hold on to a relationship we both knew was failing - or for me it was at least. We’d been together so long, we were both afraid of ending things, but at the same time too frightened to make any of the usual commitments like marriage or children. A dog seemed easier somehow.”

Grant picks up sliding his hand up and down Archie’s spine. “And you got custody.” His voice is notably less tense now; she takes it as a good sign.

“I did,” she says readily, deciding to leave out for now her own theories as to why she retained custody. She doesn’t know for certain it was a ploy to get her back and, even if she is correct, the visitations only served to turn Archie against her ex, so it doesn’t bear mentioning.

Grant catches Archie’s long face between his hands again. “Lucky dog,” he teases.

“Quite.” She’s smiling rather absurdly, though not because of the compliment. Archie likes Grant. And Grant very plainly likes Archie; this isn’t a put-on for her benefit. In fact, she suspects if she were to call it a night and disappear into her bedroom until morning, Grant would gladly stay out here with the dog until breakfast. 

Unfortunately - or, she hopes, fortunately for Grant - she has other plans.

“Grant,” she says, dropping her voice slightly.

“Yeah?” He glances her way and his eyes immediately fall to the V of her blouse, the one she’s pulled just low enough that he can see the edging on her bra. 

“I think it’s time for bed.”

He nods far too many times, his throat working soundlessly. Archie whines when he leaves off petting him to stand. “Sorry, boy,” he says, “your mom needs my help.”

“Do I?” Jemma laughs, enjoying the dumbstruck way Grant’s still looking at her. It’s a bit thrilling having that kind of effect on him.

His eyes meet hers and a wicked grin comes over him. “Oh yeah.” In one swift motion he’s got her off the couch and wrapped around him. She’d be impressed if she wasn’t so busy holding on.

Archie barks excitedly.

“No, boy,” Grant says firmly. “Sit.” To Jemma’s complete astonishment, Archie’s tail hits the floor. He never listens to anyone’s orders save her own. “Stay,” Grant adds and, as he carries her into the bedroom, Archie remains right where they left him. He looks a bit dejected at being left out, but once the door closes and Grant lends her two very welcome helping hands, she forgets all about him.

At least until later, when she’s half asleep and feels a cold nose nudging at her and Grant’s tangled legs. She cuddles closer to Grant as he sleepily pats the mattress to urge Archie onto the bed with them; it really was a _very_  good night.

 


	26. let me make it up to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Uprising AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt" "let me make it up to you" from aos-biospec over on tumblr  
> Plus a bonus minific set in the same universe and written for the prompt "replace."

Jemma’s first indication that a visitor has entered the lab is the guard at the back snapping to attention and disappearing quickly through the side door. As there are only two people in this tiny base capable of garnering such a reaction and one is only too happy to announce himself whenever he enters any room, it’s not difficult at all to guess who’s behind her.

Her shoulders tense and she fists her hands on the counter top to keep them from shaking. “I’m working as fast as I can,” she says tightly, “but I’m afraid these things can’t be rushed. If I could make the chemicals combine faster-”

He chuckles, a dark, hollow sound that’s wholly unlike the man she thought she knew yesterday. 

“I’m not here to hurry you up, Jemma,” he says. She can’t hear his footsteps, but she _can_ hear his voice drawing closer. It sends a shiver up her spine. “You’ve been working six straight hours.” He hitches one hip against the lab bench beside her; she keeps her eyes fixed on her samples. “I think we both know you didn’t relax at all on the quinjet ride down here. How long was it before that? Have you slept at all since the Hub?”

She finally turns, unable to ignore him. “You’re here to send me to _bed_?” she asks. It was his practice on the Bus to do just that. He asked them one night early on, while they were all relaxed and eating together (like a family, she thinks painfully), how long they could go on working. Once he had his answer, he enforced it strictly, always showing up the very moment thinking became difficult and dexterity started to wane.

She thought it terribly sweet of him and, a time or two, took ridiculous pleasure in having him fuss over her. Now, it’s not sweet and there’s no amount of fussing in the world that would please her, not coming from him.

He shifts, folding his arms over his chest. “You’re no use to us if you work yourself to death or fuck it all up because you were tired, so yeah.”

She lets out a weak laugh and turns her attention back to her samples. “Somehow I don’t think Garrett will agree.” He wants the GH-325 _yesterday_ and has made it clear that if her research doesn’t progress as swiftly as he desires, he’ll allow Raina to resume the human trials she was in the middle of when Jemma and Grant arrived. Just the thought of those mutilated corpses is enough to turn her stomach. 

Fingers draw along the side of her neck, brushing her hair back over her shoulder and stilling her instantly. The sensation - light and inappropriately sensual - is at odds with the ache that’s settled into those muscles. The contrast steals the breath from her lungs and has her leaning heavily against the table.

“I’m sorry about these,” he says, fingering what she imagines to be the edge of a bruise. “I needed Coulson to think I was serious.”

Again, he succeeds in drawing her focus back to him. “You threatened to _kill me_ ,” she reminds him, voice made shaky by the way he’s still touching her. “You used me as a _human shield_.” 

He steps closer, his free hand coming up to slide into her hair and his body following hers as she moves back, crowding her against the table. “It was a play,” he says, as though that means anything at all, “I was just trying to scare Skye into giving me the coordinates. It wasn’t real.”

She cannot even _fathom_ that level of delusion. It _wasn’t real_? Does he think the bruises on her neck and the slight burn she still feels every time she swallows are imaginary? Does he think the spirit in which he held her hostage against the others’ good behavior negates the terror they all felt?

He shot May! (With an ICER, thank goodness.) Not to mention the injuries Trip suffered in his last ditch attempt at saving her after she volunteered to go with him just to stop the whole standoff. 

And he doesn’t even care, does he?

The thought settles heavily on her heart as he tips her head back. “These look like they hurt.” And then he has the audacity to bend over her so that he can more easily press feather light kisses along the marks he left earlier. 

It’s worse than his touch. In no time at all the heels of her hands are leaning heavily on the edge of the lab bench and she no longer needs him to hold her head back. 

He’s a monster, a murderer, a liar who’s spent the better part of the year playing her like a fiddle. But he’s also a highly trained specialist and it’s no wonder, with a face like his, they ensured he was well versed in seduction.

He makes his way slowly around her neck and, when he reaches what must be the end (she can only hope it’s the end), moves higher to whisper in her ear, “Let me make it up to you.”

His body crowds hers. She can feel every inch of him. Including the stiff line of the bandage she applied to his abdomen earlier. It’s a timely reminder of just who she’s dealing with and she forces her eyes open to face him.

“And if I say no?” she asks, voice much steadier than before.

She has known this Grant Ward for less than half a day and has no frame of reference for the expression on his face now. She holds her breath until finally, with no outward sign of having decided anything at all, he steps back far enough she can breathe. 

“Then nothing happens,” he says, somewhat stiffly. “But you’re still going to bed.”

She nods once. “Then I’ll go to bed, thank you. After I store these samples properly.”

He remains where he is while she works, a statue in the middle of the lab, watching her every move and refusing to be moved even when he’s plainly in the way. And when she’s done, his hand closes around her upper arm and he escorts her to a narrow cell and locks her in. Alone.

She sighs in relief.

 

 

 

**replace**

 

There’s this film playing in Jemma’s head of what _would have_ happened, of what was _going to_ , and even though that horrific eventuality has been cut short by the bullet currently wedged in her attacker’s brain, she can’t seem to make it stop. She can’t even move to get away from the pool of blood until rough hands drag her to her feet. The chest she’s held against is warm compared to the chill clinging to every inch of her.

She can’t make the film stop.

But the warmth is enough to make her aware of the world around her again, just in time to hear Ward say, “There are twenty more just like him outside; Simmons is irreplaceable.” In other circumstances, the words would terrify her, but with the film still running, all she can feel is grateful.

 


	27. first

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant enjoys riling her up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt.

“I was here first,” Jemma says the moment Grant’s ass touches the plastic chair.

“Okay?”

She pins him with a glare. “So _leave_.”

“I don’t see why I have to leave. There’s no rule saying I can’t enjoy my cinnabon right here.”

“You’re not here to enjoy a cinnabon, you’re here to stakeout the Sbarro girl, same as I am. But SHIELD was here first so you and your HYDRA lackies can just run along.” She makes a little shooing motion with her hand. It’s adorable.

He sips his soda, just to watch her forehead do that cute angry wrinkle thing that means she’s close to snapping. And then he sips it again for good measure.

“ _Ward_.”

She‘s already wincing before he gives his now-standard response: “Yes, Mrs. Ward?”

Her righteous anger flees, replaced by something a lot less appealing. “Will you just _go_? Please? I’m already having a terrible day, I do not need the headache from you on top of it.”

He reaches across the table to rest his hand over hers. He means it to get under her skin - and that of anyone who happens to be watching - but when she doesn’t pull away, he’s genuinely concerned. “Do I need to kill someone?” 

She doesn’t look scandalized or even give him that disappointed look that’s become her go-to in the last year. She smiles. Fondly. Now he’s _really_ worried.

“It’s fine. Just-” Her expression sours. “No. I will not be telling you who. We both know you’d take it as invitation to do them harm.”

Well he did offer. His eyes slide from hers at a heads up from Hicks in his ear. “Was it, by any chance, a certain Air Force general?”

Her hand spasms under his and he holds it firm so she can’t do something stupid like spin around to look for herself.

“Who, I’ll just point out, you’ve met.” Not that he needs to point it out. She’s sitting painfully straight all of a sudden, clearly looking for an escape. 

If Grant’s any judge of the look on her face - and he is - there are plainclothes men already on the doors behind him. She won’t be getting out that way. She’s trapped.

But he’s not. “You want me to make your day better?”

She scowls and leans closer - her expression’s a kick in the balls but it’s the first time in months she’s willingly moved nearer to him, he’ll take it - to hiss, “If you think you’re going to start a shootout with the United States military in a mall, Grant, I swear-”

He cuts her off by standing, smoothly pulling her to her feet along with him and nestling her under his arm. He brings her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles, which serves the dual purpose of being fun and hiding her face behind her arm as he turns her into the narrow hall between the Hot Dog on a Stick and the Spuds ‘n’ Things. It’s mostly hidden behind an ugly plastic fern and a neon sign, so no one’s likely to notice them unless they’re trying to get back here, and most of the people who will are teenagers who won’t much care to stop what Grant’s got planned.

“There’s no way out,” he says, crowding Jemma up against the wall. “And we can’t risk Talbot seeing you. So we’ll have to make sure he doesn’t.”

Her eyes drop to his lips. “Will we?” Her shoulders are pressed firmly back and she’s trying to keep a strong set to her chin, but he can feel her fingers curling at the belt loops on his jeans. _She_  may want to pretend she doesn’t have feelings for him anymore, but her body has other ideas.

He leans in close enough to feel her breath catch. “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll salvage your day yet.”

She doesn’t admit that’s what he does, but if her dazed expression when he finally gets the all-clear from Hicks is any indication, he more than succeeds.

 


	28. kidnapping / shoulder kiss / luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SHIELD Jemma / Civilian Grant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the triple prompt: kidnapping, shoulder kiss, and luck

There’s an argument going on in the next room, loud enough Grant can guess it’s over him and what he told them would happen at the end of all this. Which means he’s got minutes before one of them decides to be done with it and comes in here to put a bullet in his head.

Or not even that. The short one - Jemma - slips through the door and closes it quietly behind her, wincing as the fight reaches new levels. The closed door dampens the sound enough she relaxes briefly against the wall. Her eyes slip shut and her forehead’s still creased with worry, but she’s giving herself space to breathe.

“I did warn you,” Grant says.

She jumps. Like she forgot this was the room they were keeping the hostage in.

He shrugs, tries to keep the motion tight on account of the cuffs and his hands being above his head. “Christian doesn’t give a shit about me. He’d rather climb in the polls by refusing to give in to terrorists and playing the grief card than have me back.”

“We’re not terrorists,” she insists, but it comes out tired and she sits heavily on the edge of the bed, head bowed. She’s off in her own little world. Probably, if he had to guess, thinking about her life choices. Because this isn’t even the first time she’s given him the “not a terrorist” line and he’s only known her two days. “Listen,” she says, “I want you to know, whatever happens, I’m not going to let you be killed. We’re after your brother-”

She cuts off, going stiff as a board when his hand wraps around her throat. Right now she’s either thinking he’s supposed to be cuffed to the headboard or wondering where he got a letter opener or both.

“Christian got a magic kit for Christmas once,” he says, settling behind her as agonizing feeling seeps back into his arms, “he cuffed me to a fence in the snow and left me to fend for myself. I learned there’s this little bone in your thumb you can break and-”

She flinches when he uses her shoulder for leverage to snap the bone back into place. It hurts like a mother, but he can kind of use the hand again and holds her more tightly against him. She’s warm and his kidnappers didn’t exactly care about keeping his room heated.

“As for this-” he slides the letter opener lightly over her skin- “wouldn’t you know someone once lost it in the back of one of the drawers and housekeeping never found it wedged up in there? Lucky for me, huh?”

She makes what could be an affirmative hum or a whimper of terror, he really can’t be sure. He lets his chin rest on her shoulder.

“Listen, Jemma - can I call you Jemma?”

He means it as a mocking hypothetical, but she answers anyway. “You’re holding a blade to my throat; I rather think you can call me whatever you like.”

His emotions are wrecked, he’s still hurting from the beating he took when they jumped him, and he’s on the ragged edges of a two day adrenaline high. All told, it’s a miracle he doesn’t burst out laughing right then, but it’s a near thing and he’s gotta stifle his reaction somehow. He decides to bury it in her shoulder. 

When it fades, the shaking doesn’t stop. His laughter’s all gone and her hands are fisted tight on her knees but … she just can’t get a hold of herself.

He should _not_ feel bad about terrifying one of his kidnappers. That’s just common sense.

But he’s not Christian; he does care about people. Sort of.

He presses what he hopes she reads as an apologetic kiss to her shoulder. “All right then, Trixie, I want you to know, whatever happens, I’m not actually planning on killing you. I just need a human shield to make it past your kill-happy friends out there. You understand.”

“I certainly do.” Even though he can still feel her shaking, her voice is steady. And judgy. Like she’s got any ground to stand on.

“Good, glad we see eye-to-eye. Up.” He adjusts his grip on the letter opener once they’re both standing and sends up a quick prayer to whoever’s listening that his luck holds. He’s gonna need a lot of it to make it out of this.

 


	29. marriage of convenience / jacuzzi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant knows her routine. (Maybe.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt "marriage of convenience, collarbone kiss, and jacuzzi" from thestarfishdancer. But I forgot about the kiss. *shrugs*

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Jemma doesn’t know why she said that. She has nothing to be sorry for. Grant _knows_ she takes a swim every night before bed and then follows it up with a relaxing dip in the hot tub. (Or he _could_ know, is more accurate. She has no idea how closely he follows her habits.)

“Don’t be,” he says. After a beat he glances up from his phone. His eyes slide easily up her legs, over her towel, to her face. “There’s plenty of room.”

“Right. Of course,” she says like an imbecile. And then, also like an imbecile, proceeds to flutter through removing her towel and setting it aside on the nearest lounge chair. It’s not as though she wasn’t perfectly aware there’s plenty of room, it’s just that with Grant taking up even a small portion of it…

The truth is, when it comes to her husband, Jemma’s a frightened little mouse. She can boss men twice her age around the labs and stare down guards twice her size when they try to order her about, but with Grant all her courage seems to fail her.

The hot water burns at her icy toes, but then the warmth reaches her muscles. There’s nothing like a dip in the hot tub after a good swim. She studiously ignores her companion as she finds a comfortable seat where one of the jets is hitting that knot in her shoulder just right. She sighs and lets her head rest gently against the ledge.

“Why didn’t we know about it?” Grant’s voice cuts cleanly through her calm. She tries to focus on anything else - the experiment she’s currently running on those Inhuman DNA samples, the results of the human trials last week, the report on Lab 7’s latest prototype - but absolutely nothing serves to distract her from the one-sided conversation happening barely four feet away.

She wasn’t always like this. _She_ came to _him_ , in fact, offered her services to him when she learned he was building up his own HYDRA from the ruins of the old. He may know war and strategy but he’s severely lacking when it comes to the organization’s scientific roots. If he took care of the men and the weapons and the general sowing of chaos, she would handle the technological side of things. It was a perfect union.

One he proposed they seal with a ring.

It wasn’t love that prompted his offer, it was practicality. HYDRA was crumbling but it wasn’t dust, not yet, and it seemed there were enough of the old heads left that Grant wanted to tip his hat to them, show he was willing to play things their way (to an extent). You wouldn’t know it from their reputation, but it turns out the leaders of the world’s most devious organization value family.

So Grant and Jemma married. He got her scientific advances, she got his protection to carry out her experiments, and they both got the approval of the other heads and the tacit promise they wouldn’t be attacked from within.

“Well keep me updated.”

If she hoped he would leave once done with his conversation, she’s disappointed. The phone clatters softly against the tile and there’s no sound at all after that save the bubbles stirring up. 

After a count of ten, she dares to crack one eye, just to see what he’s doing. She expects to see him lounging just as she is, but he’s stiff and still, eyes fixed very firmly on her. She starts, uncertain why he’s staring.

“What?” she asks.

He slides along the ledge that acts as both a seat and a step, coming around towards her. Once he’s close enough, he catches a stray lock of her hair between his fingers. She keeps it up under a cap while she swims but always takes it out, leaving it in a messy bun, for this part of her evening routine. He twists the wet strands around his knuckles then slips his finger free in order to start again.

“What are you doing?” she asks and tells herself it’s the steam making her voice rough.

He moves even closer, his free hand curving around the side of her jaw, but it’s his leg she’s most conscious of. His knee taps hers beneath the water and the thick hair on his calf feels distinctly manly against her smooth skin. It’s an odd thing to send a jolt through her, but all the same she’s grateful to already be sitting. “Kissing my wife,” he says and leans forward.

“Why?” 

He freezes at the question and she could kick herself. But it’s a pertinent question. There must be some reason…

He kisses her when they’re out, of course. At functions or parties attended by their fellow heads. But he’s only ever touched her and held her once before.

“I- is there some special occasion?” she asks shakily, eyes lifting to the corners of the ceiling as though she expects a new camera to have sprouted there in the last ten minutes.

His hand drops from her cheek and his leg moves away from hers when he sits back. The only point of contact left between them is his fingers playing with her hair. It shouldn’t be possible to feel cold in bubbling warm water, but she does all the same.

“Do I need a reason to touch my wife?” he asks.

“Well no, of course no-”

“There’s no one watching, Jem,” he says swiftly, a sharp note to his tone. “It’s just you and me. Do I need a reason?”

She (there’s no other word for it) gapes at him for several seconds. If he weren’t speaking so clearly, if his expression weren’t so focused, she might think he were drunk. (And isn’t that sad? That it makes more sense for her husband to touch her while drunk than sober.) But he’s clearly not and - other than, to be frank about it, coming on to her - there’s nothing about his behavior to indicate there’s anything wrong. He might genuinely be serious.

“You always have before,” she says and doesn’t think she’s mistaken in counting that twitch as a wince. “So I’d say yes, you do.”

He lets her hair fall. “All right. That’s fair.” 

She doesn’t try to read his thoughts in his expression (she’s never been any good at that) and instead takes the opportunity to freely watch him. She doesn’t get many opportunities to indulge in her hopeless pining for her own husband, while she’s foolishly turning him down seems the time.

His eyes meet hers again, and if she thought she couldn’t read him before, she certainly can’t now. Whatever that expression means however, it leaves her gut twisting.

“How’s this?” he asks. “I want to.”

It takes her several heart-pounding moments to remember there was a question prior to that statement. “I- I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.”

One side of his mouth twists in a wicked smirk. “Good.” He moves and this time comes closer than before, leaving her no room at all to question his actions. 

Not that she wants to.

 


	30. sharing a bed / cuddling / wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn't like South Ossetia. This time they really are on their own. (s1 Bus days)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another triple prompt fill, prompted by aos-biospec

Jemma comes back. He doesn’t notice her weight on the mattress - she barely weighs a thing - but she starts touching him right away, like she’s gotta reassure herself he’s still here.

He drags his addled thoughts into line, forces his focus to fix on her. Her mouth is tight and the lines on her forehead are deep. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says. Same tone of voice she used when she lied to him about the night-night gun. “The team will be here shortly and you’ll be fine.”

“I know I will,” he says because he does. The bullet went through-and-through and, by some miracle, didn’t hit any of his vital organs; where it hit him, he’d be dead by now if it had. The damage is still bad though, bad enough he’s down for the count with pain robbing him of most of his reason. But not enough of it he can’t see the lie on her face. “The team’s not coming.”

“No, they are! Of course they are, it’s just…” It’s just that a civil war’s broken out and SHIELD can’t exactly be seen flying straight into the heart of the conflict. She looks at the dark phone cradled in her lap, hoping it’ll light up with good news. It doesn’t. “I’m going to see if Sergei’s coming,” she says, false brightness coloring her tone.

He catches her arm before she can stand. “Stay.” Their contact and the guy who took them in when everything went pear shaped, Sergei can take care of himself. Or he can’t, in which case there’s not a damn thing Jemma can do for him. Regardless, there’s no way she’s going outside in the middle of all this. She may be dressed in tattered jeans and ragged sweaters like everyone else in this shit neighborhood, but she doesn’t speak the language. Ten seconds talking to her and anyone will know she’s a foreigner, not a good thing to be in this kind of climate.

Her fingers brush his hair from his face. “You need those drugs.”

“And you looking isn’t going to make them come any faster.” Or at all, but he doesn’t bother adding that very real possibility. 

He thinks for a second he does though, that the words have slipped out without his meaning them to. Her eyes go wide and her expression freezes like she’s trying not to react. But that’s wrong, Jemma’d be pushing some of her unbending hopefulness on him if he’d said that, so what’s got her reacting like this?

He gives her a brief once-over - as much of one as he can from the bed - and sees right away what’s done it. His hand’s moved down her arm, totally without permission, and his thumb’s slipped past the cuff of her sleeve to slide over her pulse point. 

He should let her go, but now that he’s taking conscious notice of her soft skin beneath his, he really can’t find the will to do it.

“Ward…”

“I can’t focus,” he says, eyes on her arm and the pale skin each sweep of his thumb exposes to the dim lights. “When you’re not here, I can’t think straight; my brain keeps-” he waves his free hand off the bed- “jumping around.”

“You need those drugs,” she says again.

“What I need is to focus. I need to think and plan if we’re gonna make it out of this.” It’s just the two of them on this one. There’s no room here for the dramatic rescue that got him and Fitz out of South Ossetia and like as not Sergei’s been shot by his dealer or forcibly conscripted into either the separatist or nationalist armies. They’re on their own. “And you need some rest and I’m kinda hogging the only bed.”

She shakes her head, eyes going back to her damn phone. “You won’t get any rest if I’m here with you.”

“I won’t get any rest without you. Come on, Jemma.”

If she notices the slip or thinks anything of it, she doesn’t give any sign. He lets himself breathe again once she’s settled against his uninjured side, head on his shoulder and hand resting only a few inches above his wound. She smells like sweat and dirt and blown out building, but underneath it all is that floral scent that follows her everywhere on the Bus. It steadies his nerves, easing some of the pain.

He wraps his arm around her back, holding her close so that he can lie to himself and pretend, for just a little while, that he can really keep her safe.

 


	31. soulmates / cuddling / pregnancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A private conversation at Providence

As far as Jemma’s concerned, the best thing about Providence so far isn’t the security it offers, it’s the _beds_. Each set of quarters has a real, genuine bed. The mattress is firm and supports her back perfectly when she lays back on it. Even better is its size; personally she doesn’t need much space at all but when she moans in relief and finds herself instantly joined by a very large specialist, there’s no cause for her to shove over; he has plenty of room to himself. 

“You okay?” Grant asks, looking her over while supporting himself in a way that cannot be good for his ribs.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she insists - the same as she has done at least a thousand times in recent days, “just tired. Your progeny is very rudely siphoning off my energy for its own use in accomplishing silly tasks like growing and developing.”

He eases down onto his side. It’s not much of an improvement - really, his ribs must be screaming because she knows he didn’t take those pills she gave him - but it’s better than before. “Rude, huh?” He taps the slight swell of her belly. “You gonna be a problem child?”

“With a prodigy and a former juvenile offender for parents? No, never.”

Grant smiles. It’s the first she’s seen from him since he left her at the Hub - the _first_ time - and it’s gone far too soon. “The others have been taking care of you?”

She rolls her eyes to pin him with a _look_. “Really? You think the others would be giving me special treatment now that they know? You think Trip was glued to my side for the entire trek through the woods or Skye insisted on walking ahead of or behind me every time I took a flight of stairs or Fitz harangued me near constantly to try the mobile heart monitor he ‘just invented’ as if he hadn’t better things to do?”

The smile slowly returns as she runs down the list and he hides it behind a kiss he plants on her palm. It’s such a lovely sight she considers telling him about Coulson stopping in every hour to check on her or May slipping her a box of ginger biscuits she got who-knows-where, but decides to keep those for when she has real need of his smile. He’s here now and just his presence is plenty. The bond between them was a reassurance he was alive in the days they’ve been separated, but it’s no substitute for seeing him here and whole and - marginally, after the events at the Fridge - healthy.

She brushes her fingers lightly over his cheek, taking care to avoid the cuts and bruises. “Do you want to talk about it?”

That beautiful smile disappears, as she knew it would. But she isn’t one of their friends, she’s his soulmate. If he needs to give voice to whatever happened - more than the callous recitation he gave in the lab - he can do it here, with her.

The pain that mars his features has her regretting her decision but she wouldn’t take it back. “No,” he says into her palm and releases his hold on her hand to pull himself around her.

She readily holds him, allowing him to bury himself in the comfort of the bond. He’s told her that touching her helps. It steadies him, gives him focus in dire circumstances and eases his fears after the danger’s passed. 

“It’s all right. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Slowly he eases off her, far enough to look her in the eye. “But you want to.”

Shame-faced, she looks away and finds her gaze drawn to where her hand’s fallen atop her stomach. “I’m glad he’s dead. I know it’s terrible and you’re not, but I am because it means we’re safe.”

His head drops to rest on her shoulder, a solid, gentle weight. He’s stability in a chaotic world and she’s grateful she doesn’t have to face this without him.

“But I can’t stop worrying that we’ve missed something.”

A ripple of tension runs through him and he lifts himself again. “Like what?”

She sighs, wishing she didn’t have to worry him with this but if she’s right … She looks to the ceiling, unable to face him. “I know there’s never been a documented case of a genuine psychic. And I know that Skye and Coulson are convinced he knew everything he did because he had clearance.” She forces herself to meet his eyes. His brows knit in worry. “But I never reported my pregnancy. How could he have known unless … unless he really did have powers or … or someone else was involved. May had cameras and microphones hidden all over the Bus, who’s to say he didn’t-”

Grant squeezes her hand, stopping her. “There was someone else,” he says. “Me.”

“You?” she demands, shock making her voice sharp. He winces.

“I told John you were pregnant. I asked him to use his connections to get you off the Bus because I didn’t want you or-” he looks at her stomach- “or our kid anywhere near the Clairvoyant.”

Her heart clenches. And then he used that information against Grant, using a threat against their child to drive Grant to kill Nash. That wasn’t the last of it either. She shivers, remembering the horrid promises he made to Coulson of things he’d do to her and their child to keep Grant in line. Even knowing he’s dead, those words will feature in her nightmares for a long time.

“I’m sorry. Grant, I’m so sorry.” She tries to pull him down for a hug, but he holds firm above her, brushing a hand over her cheek and into her hair. 

“He threatened you. He tried to use you against me.” The anger in his tone is familiar, but she hasn’t seen it this intense since the day he held the berserker staff. She reaches for him, hoping the bond will ease it now as it did then. “I loved him,” he says roughly, finally coming back into her arms, “but I couldn’t let him- he _betrayed_ me.”

There are no words she can say to repair the damage Garrett’s done. She only holds him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find a prequel to this fic [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8423971/chapters/25533147).


	32. most people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now Ward has two hostages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt.

“Most people would consider kidnapping a _last_ resort,” Simmons says. Skye’s throat is still kind of hurting from when Mike choked her back on the ground in LA, so she backs her up by emphatically pointing at her.

Seriously, first Ward kidnaps Skye from Providence - doesn’t matter that she went along, she only did it because she didn’t want to be _murdered_ and _shoved in a vent_ , so it still counts - and now he’s nabbed Simmons too. Did they stop in Portland while she was out? Is the rest of the team okay?

They’ve gotta be okay, right? Simmons may be a recent addition to the team, but she’s just as much family as any of them. She kept Skye alive when SHIELD gave up, followed Coulson on his crazy road trip to the secret base with the alien drug. No way she’d be so calm and collected if Ward had hurt the others. Right?

The question retreats to the back of Skye’s brain as reality settles back in. Ward’s got this psycho look on, worse than anything in the months after his exposure to the berserker staff, and he’s stalking towards Simmons.

“Sim-” Skye says, reaching for her to pull her out of his path, but Ward beats her to it. His hands wrap around Simmons’ arms and he looms over her like some kind of nightmare. It’s on the tip of Skye’s tongue to tell him to _leave her alone_ , pain in her throat be damned.

“We both know ‘most people’ aren’t your type, baby,” Ward says.

A sick feeling sinks into Skye’s gut. She knew they were sleeping together. If it wasn’t obvious from Ward’s frequent stops in the med pod (“just checking you’re okay”; yeah, like she believed that) it was from his change in mood. He was less snippy, more understanding, just _happier_. If he wasn’t getting some, he was a pod person.

Simmons tips her chin up. “Are you implying I _like_ your ne’er-do-well tendencies?” There’s a promise of a truly epic set-down in her tone, but Ward doesn’t seem to hear it.

His smile sharpens and he leans forward, close enough their chests brush one another. “I’m saying it’s a _fact_ you married me because of them.”

Everything inside Skye freezes. She can’t even feel the burn in her throat anymore or the tightness in her gut. It’s like her body isn’t even there.

Simmons smiles - she’s being held by a serial killing, Nazi kidnapper and she _smiles_ \- and slides her arms around his shoulders. “I suppose I did. But it’s still reckless. I could’ve gotten much more information on Coulson’s plans if you’d left me.”

Ward moves his arms from hers to her waist, pulling her violently against him. “I wasn’t gonna leave you with Coulson for _one more second_.”

Simmons pets his cheek lovingly. She might say something and maybe Ward says something back, but Skye doesn’t hear any of it. She’s rushing to the back to throw up.

 


	33. welcome home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in a _very_ AU s4b

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the one-word prompt "home"

There’s a click-clack click-clack on the stairs, followed by a brief hesitation, and then the barrier goes transparent. Grant smiles and Simmons meets it with a cutting grin of her own.

“Ward,” she says, “welcome home.” 

He does love that Furiosa vibe. “Simmons. You’re looking good. Healthy,” he adds after a beat.

She stiffens at the reminder of their last encounter and perches on the edge of the chair so that, with him already sitting on the bed, they’re more or less at eye-level. As if there’s anything even about their situations. “We have questions.”

He opens his arms, inviting her to ask. That pisses her off too. Coulson was down here for more than an hour trying to agitate him into talking, but Grant wasn’t having any of it. He’s got all the cards, all the answers SHIELD is so desperate to get their grubby little hands on. All they have to do is give in to his demands.

Her mouth pulls down into this angry little line and she focuses on her tablet. “Who is the Superior?” she reads. “Was he present at the meeting? If not, do you know where he might be now? Do you have any idea who set the bomb or where they might strike next? Do you know of any other Watchdog hideouts? And,” she pauses to look him in the eye, “how the bloody hell are you alive?”

He gives himself a minute to drink in her annoyance. He won’t be getting a lot of company while he’s down here so he’ll enjoy hers while he can. It’s only when he can see an angry flush rising above her collar that he asks, “Do you mean the bombing or Campbell’s last stand? Because both are kind of weird, right?”

“ _Both_ ,” she snaps.

It is so hard not to laugh. But he manages. “In that case, I’m not really sure; thought you might have some ideas what with being the sciency one and all.” 

She grips the tablet so hard it's probably in danger of cracking. That might’ve been a little too hard of a push, so he goes on, “I know where all the Watchdogs’ major hideouts are, exactly where the next strike will be, who did it, and where the Superior is.”

Simmons sits forward, eyes lighting up hopefully. All that sharp satisfaction he’s been getting from riling her up fades, replaced by something warm and goopy. He could barf.

“Well?” she prods, only to sit back as her expression fades into preemptive disappointment. She sags in the chair, shoulders slumping against the seatback while she looks down her nose at him. “Or are there more demands? You can’t keep us running in circles forever.”

“Oh, I think I can,” he says just for the heat that climbs up her neck. “But I won’t.” He spreads his arms wide again.

She stares, shakes her head to spur him to elaborate. He only holds her gaze, giving her a meaningful look of his own until…

“No.”

He smiles.

“ _No_. You are not-” She sits up. “Why would the Superior bomb his own meeting?”

“Because I don’t like Inhumans,” he says, “but I also don’t like any of those assholes.”

“You killed a United States Senator!” 

“Not my first time. And besides, she tried to kill you. You should be thanking me.”

She rolls her eyes and falls back against the seat again. “This is ridiculous.”

“Really?” he asks, pressing his hands flat against the mattress behind him for support as he mirrors her. “Because I spent months building up HYDRA to be what _I_ wanted, taking out the relics of the former regime like Nadeer-”

“Senator Nadeer wasn’t HYDRA,” Simmons cuts in.

He pulls a face. “She might as well have been. All those months I met a lot of the old guard and she was just like them: stuffy, pretentious, thought she had all the answers to save the world from itself. Bitch.”

She’s not buying it, but he’s not here to convince her of his motivation; she can believe him or not, that’s her problem.

“And after all that work,” he goes on, “I end up body snatched by the biggest, baddest Inhuman of them all.”

“So you took the reigns of the Watchdogs in order to play both ends against the middle. Why? Petty revenge?”

“Says the woman who spent eight months plotting to kill me.”

“More like a year,” she says without a hint of remorse, “but who’s counting.”

He shrugs, he can respect that. “What can I say? It was fun.”

She huffs, unimpressed. “And the explosions? You survived today’s without a scratch.”

“I’m lucky.”

“Your clothes were _burned off_. The melted soles of your shoes were still sticking to your feet when we dug you out.”

He sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Like I said, I’m lucky. I woke up on the beach after that quinjet blew, naked as the day I was born, and ever since nothing can touch me. I’ve been shot, stabbed, run over, blown up, and I’m right as rain. One of the many perks of being possessed by a monster from the dawn of time.”

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, looking him over like she might be able to see the invincibility in his veins. He’s gotten what John always wanted, he only had to die to get it.

“You said you knew where the next attack would be,” she says, blatantly changing the subject, “do you have bombs planted elsewhere?”

“Of course.” The attack he mentioned was actually his inevitable escape from here, but if letting them think he’s got bombs set to blow all over gets him out faster, so be it.

“Do you plan on telling me where?” she asks tightly.

He shakes his head, gives it a real considering look. “Not sure I could without a map.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she sighs and stands. Apparently she really wants those coordinates. “One more thing,” she says before she’s made it to the stairs. She hesitates another few seconds, and that’s all he needs to pin down exactly what her question’s gonna be. She drags in a deep breath, steadies herself, then asks, “Why did you ask for me?”

What she means is why didn’t he ask for Daisy like he did when he was last stuck down here. 

“Keeps Coulson on his toes,” he says honestly - Coulson’s reaction when he ended the familiar demand with _Simmons_ was priceless, “and…”

“And?” she asks, her curiosity outstripping her common sense.

He smiles; he’ll be able to use that. “I’ve still got all of Hive’s memories in my head.” He gestures to his skull, the spot that aches when those other voices start clambering for attention, and lets his eyes drop from her face. “I figured it’d be more fun getting interrogated by someone I can imagine naked.”

He barely hears her stomping up the stairs, he’s too busy laughing … and of course enjoying the view.

 


	34. sorry I acted creepy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the only way to salvage a situation is to make it worse. And sometimes you just make it worse. (s1 post-uprising)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "sorry I acted so creepy."
> 
> Spoilery content warning in the end notes.

Jemma’s shaking, it’s plain as day to anyone looking at her - and everyone is. The other techs, Raina, the guards … John.

Grant steps up behind her, resting a soothing hand on her lower back at the same time he says, “Baby.” He catches John’s eye over her head, shoots him a grin while he goes on talking to her. “How long have you been working, huh? You were gone when I got up this morning.”

It takes barely a nudge and she’s letting him take some of her weight.

John smiles back. “Well at least _someone’s_ dedicated to their work around here,” he says loudly, taking in the whole room. A shudder runs through Jemma, but his attention’s off her, only Grant notices. “We have a deadline to keep, people! Or have you all forgotten what happens when you fail?” 

He points to a random guard and makes a kill gesture to the security camera in the ceiling. A second later the guard drops. One of the techs lets out a brief shriek of terror, a couple more whimper. John drinks it all up. 

“Simmons is the only one of you who asked to be here and somehow she’s working harder than any of you.” John’s stare lands on the two of them again. If Grant’s earlier grin was a little sketchy, his is downright lecherous. “And she’s been pulling double shifts too.”

That’s their cue. Grant shifts his hold on her, the better to catch any undue flinching before it’s noticed. “Yeah, you mind if she clocks out down here?” he asks. “It looks like you’ll be reading these lab monkeys the riot act for a while and I could use a little stress relief after that dust up with Coulson.” To Grant’s surprise, Jemma doesn’t flinch, she goes still. Like a rat that knows it’s been seen.

John chuckles. “You mean with the Cavalry. She’s sure got a vengeful streak in her, huh?” He waves a hand in dismissal. “Sure, son, you can keep her for the night. But don’t tire her out too much, I want her bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” Grant says with just a little bit of irony and hauls Jemma out of there without looking back.

She’s stiff against him all the way up to their quarters. She comes along fine, but her shoulders are tense under his arm. He doesn’t know what’s up but he keeps them moving until they’re behind closed doors, out of sight of the cameras and the prying eyes.

She walks ahead of him into the room while he pauses to lock the door with his keycard and, when he turns back around, he finds her already out of her lab coat and blouse. And still stiff as a statue. Seriously, with that above-it-all tip to her jaw, she could be some Roman goddess. (The breasts don’t hurt either.)

“Well?” she asks when he hesitates. “If Garrett wants me rested before tomorrow we should probably begin right away.”

Rage and disgust swell in his chest, chased along but a good helping of annoyance. “Listen,” he says while biting it all back as best he can, which becomes a lot easier once he’s stepped close enough to pull her against him. “I’m sorry for being so creepy back there, but you know how John is. He’s an ass. He’s all about control; you’ve seen how he is with the Incentives hires. He can’t see the real reason you’re here, it just doesn’t track for him. So try not to piss him off like you did today again, all right? I won’t always be there.”

She steps back, not out of his hold but enough he feels the full weight of her critical stare. “Just what is the ‘real reason’ I’m here?”

He smiles. Does she really think he doesn’t know? All those months on the Bus, the way she stared after him, laughed at his lame jokes, fussed over him after missions … he’d have been an idiot not to see it. Twice over since he was encouraging it every chance he got. He tries to tug her closer. “Baby, come on.”

She shakes her head, still wanting that answer.

He tips his own head, taking in the apartment John’s got them set up in on one of the highest floors of the Cybertek main office. It’s nice. All the swag. Big enough for two. 

When that doesn’t wipe the frown off her face he pulls her closer still, close enough he can bend to kiss along her jaw to her ear. “Everybody knows you’re mine,” he says lowly.

Her head tips back and he moves in, paying special attention to that spot on her neck that always gets her going. 

“I’m here for Fitz,” she says, her tone as cold as a bucket of ice water and just as effective.

He steps back.

“I’m here,” she says levelly, “because HYDRA wants their super soldier serum more than they want an unwilling, crippled engineer and because so long as I cooperate, I am allowed to ensure he remains in relatively good health. I work for Garrett to keep him alive. I am _yours_ only in the sense that I am your captive.”

Grant’s glad about the mat she put down in front of the door, hitting it stops him from stumbling back until he hits the door itself and looks like an asshole. Or he would be glad if he wasn’t too busy replaying the start of this - them - in his head. 

Her crying into his shirt somehow became her taking it off him. Did he give her some sign, say something to make her think she had to? He was holding her, comforting her; maybe she thought he wanted something in return? He was so shocked by the shift, he didn’t even think…

He closes his eyes tight. Suddenly all he can see when he remembers that night is Lorelei and her laughing smiles.

“So.” Jemma’s looking determinedly at a spot just over his shoulder while she reaches back to take off her bra. “Shall we get this over with?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Spoilery content warning:** While this is definitely not the case in the wider 'verse this drabble is a glimpse into, Jemma heavily implies that she's been forced to have sex with Grant against her will. (It's a grey area, seeing as she _is_ a captive of HYDRA, but she was not forced and she is trying to convince herself she's not at fault as much as she's trying to hurt him.)


	35. don't say it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been the better part of a year since Grant saw his soulmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “I love you. I know you don’t love me, so don’t say it back" from thestarfishdancer

Two hundred and nineteen days. It’s been two hundred and nineteen days since Grant last saw her. He’s seen everyone else: Coulson and Skye came down to question him, May to threaten him, Trip brought his meals, Fitz threatened him that one time, but Jemma’s never been down. Not until now. 

“Cutting it kind of close,” he says, pacing idly in front of his bed. He’ll be out of here in a few hours and after that it’s a hop, skip, and a couple bullets to freedom, he’s got a lot of energy pent up. “Eleventh hour visitation?”

She wraps her hands around the back of the chair, using it for support. The sweater she’s wearing has sleeves that stop just past her elbow, giving him a great view of the black band covering her wrist. He doesn’t bother wondering how long she’s been hiding her timer behind a widow’s band, it’s probably somewhere around two hundred and nineteen days.

He steps closer to the barrier, stopping just far enough back it won’t start to show in the air between them. “Something you wanna get off your chest?” he asks, pitching his voice to that loving, agent of SHIELD tone he used to use on her.

She flinches. Her jaw sets and she makes herself meet his gaze steadily. 

That’s his girl.

“I love you,” she says, then holds up a hand. “I know you don’t love me, so don’t say it back.” There’s a warning in her voice that has him swallowing down the denial on his tongue. “You’re my soulmate and I love you. I’ll probably always love you. But I won’t be bound to you.” She holds her wrist in front of her, staring at the black cloth covering the exact day and time they met. “I won’t see this turn red, I won’t carry you on my wrist forever.”

For a heartbeat he hopes she might be thinking about letting him go before Coulson can hand him over to be executed, but then the second half of that sentence registers. 

“Jemma, no-” The barrier shimmers to life when he steps too close. He forces himself back. “ _Jemma_. Timer removal is … it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” She’s seen his scars, tended some of the worst of them herself, she knows how bad some of those injuries were. And still, all these years after the fact, the worst pain of his life is that moment he woke up without her on his wrist. She meets his eyes, considering…

“I don’t care,” she says, voice colder than it was on that airfield in Cuba. “I don’t care how much it hurts; I want you out of my life. For good.”

She turns and takes the stairs up. He’s still yelling after her long after the door closes behind her.

 


	36. flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma doesn't know this man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "flame" from thestarfishdancer

Jemma puts as much distance between herself and the lighter as she can. Considering she’s currently tied to a chair, that amounts to little more than curling her ankles beneath her and pressing her shoulders against the upholstery.

“Grant,” she says delicately.

His eyes never waver from the flame as he lowers it to a candle placed on the table ahead of her. “I thought about you, you know. Every day.”

Considering the things she’s heard about him in the last year - the stories from his team as well as his family - she’s truly not certain whether he’s talking to her or the fire.

He snaps the lighter closed and, though she knows she’s still in a great deal of danger, something inside of her relaxes in relief. Of course, the rest of her is still quite terrified so it makes little difference.

“I know you’ve been confused,” he says, finally looking to her. “I drop off the face of the Earth during the uprising, I’m willing to bet that genius brain of yours came up with all sorts of theories as to what happened.”

She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. The weeks after the uprising were difficult to say the least. After Grant’s initial call to touch base and give her instructions, he never again made contact. She spent nearly two months waiting, certain he was dead but unable to face the reality, and then a man in a suit appeared at her door.

“Coulson told me he came to see you,” Grant says, as if reading her mind, “and he probably had plenty of stories.”

“Yes,” she agrees, seeing no point in hiding it, “he did.” Stories about the man he knew on a plane he called the Bus and how different that man was from the real Grant Ward. She looks to the sputtering flame, unable to meet his eyes. It’s not the things Coulson said or even the damning footage he shared with her, it’s the _name_. She knew the man standing over her as Grant Knight, not Grant Ward.

Grant squats down in front of her. His knees brush her shins and he reaches up to brush her hair behind her ear. “He kept me from you,” he says, his eyes strangely intent on her face. Grant’s always been a tad possessive, but it was an absentminded quality. He touched her and held her, ensuring anyone who cared to look too long would see she was taken. She might have minded a bit at first, but as time wore on she grew as fond of it as she did of all his idiosyncrasies. This single-minded focus, however, is something entirely new. “Coulson kept me locked in a hole in the ground for months or I _swear_ , Jemma, I would’ve been with you in a heartbeat. The plan was always to come for you, just as soon as I got John settled.”

Jemma never met the elusive John, the father Grant never had. According to Coulson, he was also known as the Clairvoyant, a madman who spent the better part of the last three decades orchestrating horrific experiments on unwilling human beings. She can’t say she’s sorry she never got the chance to make his acquaintance.

“And what-” She hesitates. Given her current circumstances - kidnapped, restrained - she’s not certain she wants to know the answer. But curiosity’s always been her greatest vice and the words trip off her tongue after only a brief moment. “What would have happened then?”

He sighs sadly. “John had a company, one he kept separate from HYDRA. There would’ve been a place for you there. And a house - something secure, just for the two of us.” He smiles. “At first. We would’ve settled down finally, no SHIELD to keep dragging me off.”

Jemma doesn’t remind him that it was, to her understanding, never _SHIELD_ dragging him off, but his work for a military contractor, she’s rather too busy being horrified. She wondered if he would try to deny his allegiance to HYDRA, and now that he hasn’t at all, now that he’s dropped the fact of it so casually into the conversation, she finds herself wishing he had. She would have accused him of lying, but at least he would have been ashamed enough to bother.

His hand is still on her cheek, its warmth as familiar to her as her own skin. Though he’s the cause of her distress, the comfort he offers is too welcome to be refused; she tips her head into his palm and allows her eyes to slip shut. It’s so easy to pretend that they’re at home together and the last year never happened at all.

“I’m gonna make them pay,” he says, breaking her illusion, “for keeping us apart. But first I need to make sure they can’t do it again.” His hand moves from hers to slide up and down her thigh in a brisk stroke before he stands and leaves her. “I need you to understand.”

Thrown off balance by his sudden absence, she blinks her eyes open and swallows thickly; her throat is strangely tight. “Understand what?” she asks.

She can’t see where Grant has gone from her chair, but it takes only a moment to realize he’s gone to close the curtains. The candle burns bright in the surrounding darkness. When he speaks, Grant’s soothing voice comes from above her, seems to fall on her like rain. His warmth at her back anchors her.

“What is best.”

There’s a weight to his words Jemma likes not at all. She doesn’t dare ask him to elaborate; she fears she’ll learn what he means soon enough.

 


	37. shoulder rubs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When kidnapping FitzSimmons, surprises are the last things you want to find. Set in 3x09 "Closure"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "shoulder rubs" from thestarfishdancer

“I would be happy to let Giyera deal with this,” Malick says with a vicious smile, “he does have a particular knack for this sort of thing, but there’s been a complication.”

Grant’s pulse kicks up. The last time there was a complication while FitzSimmons were being brought in, it was John’s heart stopping. He walks a little faster down the hallway; with the two of them, there’s no way he can prepare for what’s coming until he’s seeing it for himself.

Simmons is Fitzless in the room at the end of the hall. A lab, actually, which effectively erases any relief he might’ve felt at her being alone; she’s more dangerous with a scalpel than a gun. There’s a guard on the door - inside and out, interesting choice - and a doctor hovering over Simmons, who’s unrestrained, propped up by no less than three pillows, and very pregnant.

Grant was right, there is no way he could’ve foreseen this.

But he should’ve, he thinks as numb legs carry him closer. He was too little to remember when his mother was expecting Thomas and he wasn’t around when Anna had her kids, but he knows what Simmons looks like when she’s not carrying a person inside her. That big a belly, that could definitely be a whole baby in there.

She watches him, angles closer to the HYDRA doc to keep as much distance as her position allows between them as he draws near. The doctor doesn’t do shit to protect her from him. In fact, after laying a steadying hand on her shoulder, she leaves her to report quietly to Malick. 

Grant’s not really trying to pay attention - he’s a little busy focusing on Simmons’ wary eyes and swollen stomach - but years of spy work aren’t easily set aside. He hears “thirty-seven weeks” and “telling the truth,” which all lead to something he doesn’t give a damn about when he hears the word “healthy.”

The pounding of his heart, which has only increased since he saw her, finally softens to something less than deafening. He may not know anything about pregnancy but he can count, and thirty-seven weeks sounds about right.

“As you can see,” Malick says, voice gentler than Grant’s ever heard it, “circumstances have changed.” He comes to the end of the exam bed and gives Jemma a fatherly smile. “Dr. Simmons here has not only done what no man sent through the monolith in ten thousand years has managed, she’s found favor with our God while in his presence.”

“So torturing her is off the table,” Grant says, putting to words what Malick won’t. For that, he gets a glare, like the old man thinks Jemma is dumb enough not to have realized torture was on the menu the second HYDRA got their tentacles on her. As for her, she’s still holding Grant’s gaze. The fear in her eyes spikes a little at his words, but not a lot. There’s something else taking up space in them. A question, maybe even a plea.

“Of _course_ ,” Malick says, voice dripping false sincerity, “we’re not animals, Ward. And it’s not as though there’s any need for it now that we know our goals are all aligned. You want the same thing we do, doctor, I’m sure.”

Jemma dares to look at him, and Grant takes the opportunity to move in. He rests a hand on her shoulder and doesn’t miss the way Malick’s cheek twitches at the familiarity. 

“It’s been tough, I bet,” Grant says lowly while massaging the tension out of her neck, “inside SHIELD all this time. I bet you never even told the team who the father is.”

She tips her head up to face him. She looks the same as she did when he cornered her in that bar three weeks after Kara’s death. Steady. Scared but brave enough not to back down. Angry at someone other than him. Less drunk now though, which is good, considering. “No. No, I didn’t think they’d take it well.”

“But we’re not them,” he says before Malick can try to cut his way into the moment. “We understand.” He presses his fingers against the side of her stomach. “Your kid’s gonna need his father. And a father will do whatever it takes to protect his child, his _family_.” 

She nods slowly and he feels her fingers wrap around his wrist, just outside of Malick’s line of sight.

“So,” he says with a smile, “you wanna answer Malick’s questions about how you got back?”

She drags in a breath, and for a second he’s afraid she’ll crack under the weight of the lie she spun, but then he remembers this isn’t the Jemma from the Bus. This is the new and improved version, the one that killed Bakshi, nearly killed him, and drove him up the wall - almost literally - in Andover. 

She meets Malick’s eyes without a hint of fear or deception. “Of course. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family.”

The way her fingers tighten around his wrist on the final word is promising, but investigating her real feelings on the subject will have to wait until he’s got Malick occupied enough with this god of his that he can get his family the hell out of here.

 


	38. go home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's been kidnapped. Or rescued. It's kind of blurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Go home" from streetlightsky

“Go home,” Grant says and steps away, leaving her unsteady.

“What?” She can’t help a glance at the very intimidating man who’s been hovering at the door this whole time. It’s obvious that Grant’s the one in charge here and this man - and all the rest outside - work for him, but for some reason she finds him the least frightening of all of them.

Likely that has something to do with him saving her just a few hours ago.

“You’re just letting me go?”

Grant smiles at her the same way he did when she said she was fine, it was just a scratch. Of course then he swept her up in his arms - which was rather forward thinking of him, as she was definitely lying about her injuries - and carried her to what she now recognizes to have been an ominous black van. Which delivered them here, to this warehouse with its guards and stores of weapons and dozens of men and women just like the man at the door. 

And doctors. One of them saw to her aching shoulder and the cut on her forehead. All the while, Grant hovered, like some awe-inspiring guardian angel.

She touches the bandage just above her temple and wonders again if perhaps she suffered some brain damage when her head struck that brick wall. She’s in what is obviously a secret lair and she’s feeling positively towards the man who runs this operation, the man who basically _kidnapped_ her.

“What else am I gonna do with you?” he asks.

Something nefarious, she’d imagine. He spent a good deal of the last several hours quizzing her on her own life - her profession, her friends, her family (or lack thereof) - and she rather thought it was all heading towards some sort of job-offer-slash-threat.

“Besides, the police are gonna be looking for you,” he adds. “Your boyfriend’s dead.”

Her stomach twists, though not too painfully. It’s confirmation of a reality she’s been ignoring ever since Grant settled his hands on her shoulders and demanded she stay awake despite the pain.

“And you,” she says slowly, “think I won’t tell them about … all of this.” She waves a hand to take in both the man at the door and the warehouse beyond it. 

Grant grins, sharp and dangerous. She shouldn’t take comfort in the untapped violence simmering in every inch of him. He killed Freddie. 

And, in doing so, saved her from him. He was drunk and angrier than she’d ever seen him. Who knows what might have happened to her if this man, whoever and whatever he may be, hadn’t come along.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, “I’m counting on it.” 

He steps closer. His fingers brush lightly around her bandage, just close enough to the wound to give her a thrill of not-quite-pain while he moves her hair back over her ear. She has the sudden fear that it must look terrible. She spent ages on it before going out but after the alley and the subsequent hours, it must be a mess.

“You don’t know it, but there’s a reason you gravitate towards shitheads like Morland, a reason you’re always bored at work and you keep picking up the phone to call parents you never even had.”

It’s a good thing he’s so close. If it weren’t for his body heat, she’d be shivering.

She’d like very much to accuse him of spying on her and leave it at that - it would be nothing at all to a man with the resources he’s exhibited tonight - but even if he was, there’s no way he could guess that bit about her parents. She’s an orphan, lost her parents before she was old enough to remember them. The hollow in her heart from lack of them makes sense; picking up the phone to call people who never existed doesn’t.

“You’ve even started dialing, haven’t you, Simone?” Grant asks gently. His hands run up and down her arms in a comforting circuit. 

She has. More than once. There’s a number on the edge of her memory - likely that of an old friend or one she heard from television ads a thousand times - but it’s the one she always finds herself stalled in the middle of, wondering what she thinks she’s doing.

One of Grant’s hands lifts away to tip her chin up. “You don’t remember, but someone hurt you - way worse than that bastard did tonight. They hurt me too.”

She looks to the man at the door again. “All of this,” she asks, “is for them?”

He chuckles. “Some of it’s for me - gotta have long-term goals - but yeah, first item on the list is making them pay.”

“And you think when they hear about you rescuing me, they’ll come?”

When she faces him again, his smile is nothing short of terrifying. “I know they will.”

“Why?”

He laughs again and drops his hands from her arms. “Believe it or not, they’ll come to save you from me.”

She looks him over, head to toes, sees the handle of a knife in his boot, the bulge of a gun at his side, the bruises on his knuckles from what he did to Freddie. And then she thinks about this place, the equally dangerous men and women outside this room, the weapons and resources that speak of more power than this one location can contain. And then tonight: her fear, her pathetic weakness - she _apologized_ after Freddie nearly tore her arm out of its socket dragging her into that alley - that stretches back as far as she can remember. Grant’s right, she’s always gravitated towards men like Freddie, looked past their anger and abuse because she needed someone to fill up her emptiness.

If he’s right too that there’s someone out there to blame, someone who hurt her and left her this mess of a woman, she doesn’t want to go home and wait for them to show up.

She steps closer and, when Grant doesn’t move away, curls two of her fingers through one of his belt loops. “You’re going to hurt them?” she asks.

He nods once. “Kind of a lot, yeah.”

She pulls until his hips brush hers. “Then I want to help.”

He searches her face, expression unreadable. Whatever he finds, it leaves him smiling. One of his hands curls around the back of her skull. “I think we can make that work.”

 


	39. perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The isolation gets to them both from time to time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "you're perfect" from aos-biospec

“You’ll never believe this!” Jemma says the moment her foot touches the ground. “There’s a new lake!” It must have been uncovered last night while It was throwing another tantrum. “And I think it might be devoid of-” What she meant to say - tentacle monsters - is replaced by a yelp of fright. 

She stumbles, struggling to keep her feet beneath her as her eyes search the shadows of the cave. “I thought-” she pants, seeing nothing at all, “I thought I saw-” She shakes her head. Perhaps the isolation is getting to her after all.

She turns, trying to order her thoughts to explain that she thought she saw a strange woman standing in the corner, but Grant doesn’t seem to have noticed her fright. He’s sitting on the edge of his cot, hands held in his lap in a way that strikes her as worrisome.

“Grant?” she asks, stepping closer. There’s no damage she can see, but he is thumbing the scar on the inside of his wrist. She wraps an arm around his shoulders as she settles beside him.

“How can you be with me?” he asks, voice rough and raw as she’s ever heard it.

“Well I don’t exactly have many other options,” she teases, hoping to draw him out of it.

He twists away. “I’m serious. After everything I’ve done, how can you stand-” he looks down at his hands- “how can you stand to let me _touch you_?”

She catches his hands and pulls them to her mouth, kissing first the knuckles of one hand, then the other. 

“I’m a monster,” he says weakly. “Just like that thing up there.”

She sighs. “Is this about the other day?”

He turns his face towards the wall. So it is. Fantastic. It’s normal for each of them to have episodes like this, moments of weakness that overwhelm them, but she was hoping to avoid one following that incident.

She dares to drop one of his hands so that she can cup his cheek. “I’d had a _nightmare_ \- one about that thing up there - it was nothing to do with you at all.” Save that her dream was of that thing taking him from her, wearing his face and using it to torment her. She shifts closer to him in order to better feel his warmth. “I won’t pretend that you didn’t do some monstrous things in the past, but that was before. Here and now?” She cups his cheek. “You’re perfect. And you’re all that I could want.” She tips her head to one side. “Aside from a shower, a bottle of wine, a cheeseburger-”

“Bacon cheeseburger,” he corrects. He’s smiling.

She kisses his wrist. “A bacon cheeseburger.” 

On Earth he truly was a monster, but perhaps that’s what makes him so perfect here. This is a violent and dangerous place, full of monsters that like to hide in the shadows. Grant is right at home. He’s taken to this brutal world in a way that does, honestly, sometimes frighten her, but he’s never failed to protect her. 

Whatever he was before, whatever they were, none of that matters here. It’s far away, lifetimes and light years. 

She pulls him closer. “I love you.”

For a moment he only stares at her, emotion shining in those dark eyes of his. And then he moves and she’s beneath him and all thoughts of Earth or the new lake outside or the figure watching from the shadows are lost to her.

.

.

.

“How is our patient?” Holden asks. He’s just returned from yet another meeting at SHIELD regarding Aida’s supposed corruption by the Darkhold. And yet again, he’s failed to discover the book’s location. If things don’t change soon, those fools might actually manage to destroy it before he can recover it.

“Thriving,” Aida says. “Surprisingly.” She adjusts the fluids running into Simmons’ IV and steps away. 

“You’re confused,” Holden says. He does so love the quirks of Aida’s programming. They’ve become so much more pronounced since she gained a physical body. 

“I would posit Agent Simmons is confused,” she counters. “She appears to be happy with a man she has professed to hate.”

Ah, that was a risk, he’ll admit. He would have preferred Fitz, but no amount of programming would be able to replace ten years of familiarity. And her astronaut would have been best, but Holden knows nothing of him aside from his existence. Pressed for time as he was, Grant Ward seemed a reasonable compromise. Holden had the physical specs and enough data on hand to create a basic personality profile, one he’s been able to shore up thanks to Simmons’ LMD’s access to SHIELD’s files.

He expected Simmons to waste time fighting the construct, not shack up with it, but he supposes dire circumstances breed strange bedfellows. Or some such cliché, he’s far too sober to come up with a sensible one at the moment. Where is the scotch?

“And she has claimed her months on Maveth were some of the worst of her life,” Aida adds. She notes the direction of his gaze and moves to pour him a glass. Good girl.

“And yet she thrives there,” Holden sighs, falling into his desk chair. He returns his focus to Simmons. Her body is pale, nearly lifeless after so many days hooked up to his machines, but her _mind_ … “Yes, humans are a conundrum. I admit, the location was a bit of a gamble, but Simmons is too smart to be easily fooled. It would have taken constant supervision to ensure she didn’t see the flaws in the program. But Maveth … It’s an isolated environment, easily controllable, and Hive prevents her from venturing towards the edge of the virtual world.” He smiles broadly at Aida. “It’s perfect.”

 


	40. I meant it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s4 fic with past Grant/Jemma/Kara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "When I said I loved you, I meant it."

Jemma’s back. She’s safe and sound in Nemesis base, wrapped up in that grey sweatshirt of his that she keeps giving back and then stealing because she says she likes that it smells like him. But just because she’s back doesn’t mean everything’s fine.

She’s quiet. And Jemma’s silences are never good. He spent months coaxing words out of her again, teaching her to speak her mind after Whitehall programmed her not to speak unless spoken to. And now, after two days with SHIELD, she’s back to that again. Hasn’t said more than ten words since they rescued her and most of those were quiet yeses and noes to the medic patching her up.

Grant kneels down beside the bed so he’s more on her level and rests his palms flat on her thighs. She stops staring at the blank wall, so that’s something, but there’s a hollowness in her eyes he hasn’t seen in weeks. What the hell did they do to her?

“Sweetheart,” he says, finally unable to take it. “You gotta give me something here. I can’t fix whatever SHIELD did unless you tell me.”

A shiver runs through her and she looks down at his hands. “Kara,” she says, and though she says it softly, the word is like a punch. He can’t remember the last time he heard her say it outside of nightmares or desperate sobs.

Grant’s hands flinch, but he refuses to move them. “What about her? What did they tell you?” He knows though. He already knows exactly what SHIELD would tell her about Kara. He can just imagine how eager they would’ve been to throw it in her face.

She meets his eyes and yeah, they told her. It’s all right there in her heartbroken expression.

He starts to pull away, only to have her slip off the bed and into his arms. “No,” she says. The order shocks him as much as the arms holding him to her. She’s getting better, but it’s still a lot for her to outright defy him. She buries her face in his neck. 

“After SHIELD arrived,” he says, forcing out the words he’s been rehearsing for months, “and we split up, she put on May’s face. So she could attack them and they’d never see it… But I didn’t know. And when I came around the corner…”

Jemma’s arms tighten, aggravating the injuries he sustained while rescuing her. He doesn’t push her off; he deserves way worse.

Her breathing is wet and heavy on his skin, just short of real crying. “When I said I loved you,” she says while pulling back, “I meant it.” Her hands touch lightly at his chest, no real aim behind them except contact. She meets his eyes. He hates the tears he sees in hers. “This doesn’t change that. It was SHIELD’s fault. Kara would be the first to say so.”

He cups her cheek in his hand. The warmth of her skin, her hands on him … it isn’t enough. He pulls her into his arms and then, after long seconds of just enjoying the feel of her against him, he stands and pulls them both down onto the bed. She rearranges herself, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping slim fingers around his wrist, holding his pulse point. He still feels cold, the bed too big and empty.

But not as empty as it could be.

He spent the last two days anywhere but here, tearing SHIELD apart, unable to face the possibility of losing her too. As she drifts off to sleep, he clings tight to her and lets his eyes focus on the photo on their nightstand. SHIELD’s already taken so much from them, he swears he’ll tear the organization to the ground for trying to take Jemma too.

 


	41. I've been waiting all my life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are worse ways to meet your soulmate. 1x07 The Hub AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “I’ve been waiting all my life for you" from streetlightsky

“No,” Jemma says. And then, as she storms into the nerve center, even louder. “No!”

“Agent Simmons-” Hand begins.

“I’m sorry,” Jemma says, but not to her, to the specialist leaning against the row of computers beside her. And that’s mildly terrifying: a specialist _leaning_ on something. It makes her wonder if the sling he’s sporting is the full extent of it. “I’m sure you’re very-” she gestures to his body, muscles and cheekbones and all- “qualified-” she turns to Coulson- “but he’s _injured_! How can you expect Fitz to go undercover in a _war zone_ with a specialist who isn’t even at his best?”

Coulson looks like he’d very much like to agree with her. Hand looks like she’s toying with the idea of having her dropped back down to level three for this little outburst. And Fitz … well, Fitz is turning an impressive shade of mauve. 

At least Trip seems amused. He followed her in here and, while he vouched for the injured specialist, doesn’t seem terribly put out that she hasn’t taken his word for it.

“She’s got a point,” Agent Cheekbones says. “Besides, I’d rather not go anywhere right now.” 

Jemma finds herself suddenly facing him again. Her hand is in his and that surly expression he’s been wearing since the moment she first laid eyes on him is gone, replaced by what might - possibly, she is aware specialists are quite adept at faking such things - be a smile. 

“Because I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you.”

From behind Jemma, she hears a great many things. There’s a groan from Fitz, what might be stifled laughter from Coulson, and Trip lets out a faint and approving, “Smooth.” Not that she pays much attention to any of that. She’s busy looking at her _soulmate_. 

 _He_ may have been waiting his whole life to meet her, but _she’s_ been waiting all of hers to hear those - admittedly sappy; she does hope she’s reading that hint of teasing in his eye accurately or she’ll have to get used to a cavity-enducingly sweet future - words.

Hand and Coulson are arguing now. SHIELD of course has protocols in place for soulmates to spend time together after first meeting, but this mission he’s meant to go on (and she does need to ask his name, doesn’t she? she’ll have to do that just as soon as she finds the will to extract her hand from his) is important. Important enough they want to send _Fitz_ , who is about as qualified as one of his beloved monkeys.

Before she can worry they will be separated - every study she’s read on the subject says that is a _very_ bad idea so soon after meeting - her soulmate gives her a slight tug and she finds herself very deep in his personal space. Deep enough she can feel his breathing and he has no trouble at all wrapping his uninjured arm around her waist.

“Hi,” he says. She might, she realizes, have been better off with a genuinely maudlin soulmate; his smile is rather devastating. 

“Hello,” she returns and hopes it doesn’t sound as breathless as she feels.

“Hey!” She twists in his hold at the sound of Trip’s voice and catches sight of him just in time to take note of the _watching you_ gesture he throws over her head. The chest pressed up against hers shakes with silent laughter.

“Understood,” her soulmate says.

Her turn resulted in her hand resting on his chest, an error she makes no move to amend once she’s facing him again. In fact, she allows her other hand to join it. He looks from her hands to her face, curious.

She fingers the edge of his sling. “What happened?”

“Dislocated shoulder,” he says, making it sound as though such an injury is commonplace.

Her frown deepens. He was, according to Trip, the specialist originally lined up to join their team but supposedly it was this injury which prevented that. It’s been more than two months, surely he should be well by now.

He sighs heavily and she knows a moment of pleasure that he would so easily identify the source of her confusion. “Caused by a bullet hitting my scapula.”

She gasps. _That_ is far more serious. 

His arm tightens around her. “I’m _fine_. At this point the sling’s mostly so I don’t forget and overexert myself.”

“Really?” she demands. “Then you won’t mind letting me see.”

He arches one of those eyebrows. They’re as dangerous as his smile. 

“I’m serious. I may not have as much experience as Trip, but I’m perfectly qualified. Let me see.”

“Uh, Simmons?” 

She pauses, hands curled around the strap of the sling, suddenly aware of just how many people are watching her. 

“Maybe,” Fitz goes on in a not-soft-enough whisper, “you shouldn’t undress your soulmate in the middle of the nerve center.”

Right. He does have a point. She feels her cheeks burning, something that is not helped at all by her soulmate’s arm moving to her shoulders. She attempts to hide the blush in his good side, but then that only makes it worse. Goodness, why did no one ever tell her meeting her soulmate would be so bloody _awkward_?

“Ma’am?” he asks.

“Go,” Hand says, sounding put-out. “But don’t get comfortable, Ward. We’re still discussing options.”

“Understood. Thank you, ma’am.” He pulls Jemma out of the room amid thoughts of whether Ward - Trip called him that too, didn’t he? - might be a first or last name or even a nickname. “So,” he says once they’re in the hall, “I don’t have quarters on base.”

It takes her three steps to realize he means because quarters provide privacy. “I have a Bus!” she says. “Er, a plane, I mean. We’ll likely have to deal with not-so-subtle staring from our team’s resident hacker, but it has a lounge.”

“Sounds good. Lead the way.” Despite the order, he doesn’t extract his arm from her shoulders. And she certainly doesn’t make a move to pull away.

 


	42. I thought you didn't want me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma's afraid to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I thought you didn't want me."

Jemma can’t stop staring. There’s no cause to. Between the dim light from the streetlights outside and her own familiarity with Grant’s profile, there’s nothing to be gained by it. Except there’s a silly, infantile part of her that thinks if she closes her eyes, when she wakes up this will have been a dream. 

So she stares, and her hand roves idly over his bare chest, touching just to touch. It’s when she makes her third inspection of a scar she doesn’t know the cause behind that his eyes finally slide to her.

“Something wrong?” he asks.

She shakes her head and uses the motion to pull herself a little closer against his side. “I’m fine.”

A muscle in his cheek twitches. “Not what a guy typically wants to hear.”

She stifles a laugh. He’s very wry and rough in bed, she’s learned. Much more the man who she sometimes finds flirting with her. She likes him like this. “I only mean there’s nothing wrong. I’m very satisfied.”

“Okay.” He shifts onto his side to face her but leaves his arm where it is as her pillow. “It’s just in my experience women who are satisfied tend to sleep after. And you can’t tell me you don’t need it - you’ve barely left the lab since yesterday - so what’s up?”

She wraps a hand around his arm, focusing on it instead of his face. “Nothing,” she says, only to immediately catalogue the half dozen tells she’s just let slip. 

His arm curls around the back of her head until his fingers come close enough to tug gently at her hair. “Jemma. Come on. You can tell me.” He huffs out a sound that might be a laugh. “I mean we just…”

“You’ll leave,” she hears herself say softly. And, now that it’s out, she can’t stop the rest. “I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

Her heart pounds fearfully in the silence. She can _feel_  his impression of her change from the fun, flirty one-night stand to the clingy, needy woman every man fears. Perhaps he’ll leave now just to get it over with. She doesn’t want that. She wants every second of this night she can have.

Finally his free hand cups her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “What makes you think that?”

She shrugs the shoulder not digging into the mattress. “I know you’ve been under undue stress ever since Nevada. This is just-” she waves a hand, unable to put into words that she’s a distraction, a way of venting his pent up emotions.

He catches her hand. “This is not _just_ anything. I would never use you like that.”

Her first instinct is to defend herself - she didn’t mean it like that, like he’s some lothario sleeping his way through the ranks and tossing women aside once he’s done with them - but luckily her shock is quick to still her tongue. What is this then, if it’s not _just_?

“You mean- what do you mean?”

“I mean, all those things I did to you earlier? I’ve been dreaming of that for _months_.” He pulls her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “And this too. Not this exact conversation, but talking to you like this.” He shifts closer. His knee brushes her thigh, sending sparks up her leg. “Holding you like this.”

She stares, this time drinking in every bit of him she can see in so little light so that she can analyze him like it’s the first time. A shuddering breath rises in her throat, demanding to be let out, and she says, “I didn’t think you wanted me.” And why would she, with the way he’s been hovering over Skye these last weeks? The way he smiles just because she walks into a room?

She didn’t begrudge either of them their feelings - she very consciously avoided allowing herself to stoop so low - but she saw them. Or thought she did.

He brings his face close to hers. “Oh, I wanted you,” he says, using that lovely tenor that makes her nerves shiver in delighted anticipation. “But I’m a spy. Gotta keep any real feelings hidden.”

Concern and no small amount of hurt break through her tenuous joy. “Even from the team?” 

In the months they’ve spent together, there’s been a concerted effort to break down Grant’s barriers. There was even a challenge going at one point as to who could get him to smile first during a mission. Has all of his thawing been a lie?

“From Skye, who would dance around singing ‘Sittin’ in a Tree’ all day? And Coulson, who would either lecture me on frat regs or, worse, _encourage_ it? And Fitz, who would probably try to kill me? Yeah, even from them.” His hand slides along her side. “You can’t tell me you’ve told any of them how you feel about me.”

She doesn’t bother to ask how he could possibly know she felt anything for him at all. She’s afraid she becomes a rather pathetic flirt when alone with him. “Skye knows,” she says. “And she has tried to convince me to act on it whenever she thinks I’ve drunk enough to become impaired.”

“Gotta say, I wish she’d succeeded.” His hand stops its exploration of her skin, wrapping around her hip and tugging her closer. “Then we would’ve been here a whole lot sooner.”

She tips her head back to better see him at this new angle. “You wouldn’t have left? Before I woke up?”

“You?” he asks. “Never.”

She’s surprised when, instead of rolling her beneath him, he rolls onto his back, taking her with him. He holds her head against his chest, acting as her own personal pillow, and his hand plays gently with her tangled hair.

“Go to sleep,” he orders softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She blinks rapidly and curls her fingers around his shoulder before doing as he asks. 

She wakes up seven hours later, with sunlight streaming through the curtains, and Grant’s heart still pounding away beneath her ear.

 


	43. things you said at 1am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant gets a late night visitor in Vault D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: things you said at 1 am from aos-biospec

Grant learned months ago to come alert at the sound of the door opening, so even though his sleep-heavy muscles and internal clock tell him it’s a quarter past what-the-freaking-hell in the morning, he rolls out of bed. He’s rubbing his eyes when the barrier turns transparent and he’s … honestly a little shocked by what he sees.

Simmons. In her PJs with some godawful crocheted mess around her shoulders. It makes her look small, the way she did when she used to sneak down into the medpod at all hours of the night to check on Skye.

“Hey, Simmons,” he says gently, putting on a smile. “Not that I’m not glad to see you’re okay—and I am—but isn’t it kinda early? Or late?”

She pulls her wrap tighter, shaking a little as she meets his eyes. He supposes he deserves that after what he did to her. Dropping her and Fitz saved their lives, but no way she was getting out of that without at least a little trauma.

“How did you do it?” she asks.

He keeps his smile in place through his confusion. “Do what?”

“Make us-” She pulls a face like she’s mad at herself. “Make us care about you.”

Okay, better than he might’ve hoped for. Skye asked him the same the one and only time Coulson sent her down—not to talk to him, just to check on the security in this place—but it was a whole lot meaner coming from her.

“It was a job,” he says, pitching his tone towards remorseful. “Just like when I chatted up those kids at the Academy for answers or when we stole that flash drive in Temara.” He hopes mention of the Morocco job will remind her _why_ they had to do the Morocco job. It was the region commander’s payback for having to fish the two of them out of the water, and Coulson made them take point on it.

It doesn’t look like it stirs up all the happy, companionable feelings he meant it to though. If anything, she looks even more miserable than when she came in.

“Simmons,” he says, stepping closer to the barrier, “it wasn’t-” He cuts off. Last time he used the phrase _nothing personal_ , he got called a Nazi for it. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” he says instead. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

She paces towards the stairs, arms tight around herself. She nods to herself as she goes, that genius brain of hers going a mile a minute. His smile gets a little easier to hold up. Getting visits from a stony, judgmental Coulson isn’t the same as seeing Simmons again. Even an obvious emotional wreck, she’s still like walking sunshine.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says when she turns back. “I don’t want to know what motivated you. I want to know _how_. What, specifically, did you do to make us trust you, care for you, l-” She cuts off, jaw snapping shut so fast he’s afraid she’s hurt herself. But she only waits for his answer.

He takes a step back, shaking his head. “No.” He waves her off and moves for the bed. “No, no, I’m not gonna do that.”

“Why not?” she demands. It’s a good, angry sound. Some of her spunk’s back. “Because you’ll ‘only talk to Skye’?”

He’s been down here too long. The challenge in her words has him whirling, stalking back towards her, and it’s only when he’s nearly there that he remembers himself. “Because it’ll only _hurt_ you,” he says, struggling for the right tone. “And I’ve done enough of that.”

She laughs humorlessly. She doesn’t believe him. “You can’t hurt me more than you already have. And I need to know.”

“Why?” he asks. He lifts his eyes to the camera behind her. “Because Coulson wants me to list my sins? He thinks sending you down here in the middle of the night is gonna make me feel worse than I already do?”

“No-”

“Then why? You were there. The others were there. I’m sure May would be happy to go through every mission, every game night, tell you everything I did to make you trust me, go ask her!”

Somewhere in there, between the why and him completely losing his cool, she speaks, but it doesn’t reach him until after he’s done. The fight drains out of him when it does. “What?” he asks.

She looks away, but he can still hear her voice, soft and almost shameful. _Because I still love you._

He runs a hand through his hair, turns back to the space that amounts to his room these days. He needs to focus. He’s letting the hour get to him; that’s a rookie move, and he’s better than it. This is delicate, important. If he hurts Simmons more than he already has—and he can, no matter what she thinks—only way he’s getting out of here is in a body bag. And, if he’s honest, he doesn’t _want_ to hurt her more. Simmons really is too kindhearted for any of this, he’d hate to be the one who destroys her.

But this might. He knew early on that the play he was using on her was too much. It worked, but the cost was gonna be her broken heart. If he’s not careful here, he’ll break it all over again.

“Simmons. When I-” There’s really no good way to say _used my seduction training on you_ , so he skips right on by it. “I thought you knew. About Coulson. How he came back from the dead.”

He can’t quite tell how she takes that, but her grip on that shawl’s gotten a little looser so he’s guessing well.

“I can’t lie,” she says pointedly.

He smiles, remembering that security footage Skye dug up from the Hub. “I know. But you can keep secrets. They’re not the same thing.” He can see her filing that information away. “It was about the job,” he goes on. “It wasn’t about you.”

She flinches a little, and he winces in return. One good thing about specialist work is most of his marks realize he never cared about them after he’s long gone. Seeing it face to face, he can’t say he enjoys it.

“So that’s it?” she asks, dragging herself out of her thoughts. “You flirted with me? That was your entire plan? That’s how you did it?”

His shoulders slump. “You want me to go through everything?”

She takes a seat in the chair Coulson dragged down here last week. “I have time.”

He throws up his hands and takes a seat of his own on the edge of his bed. If she wants him to go through it all, he’ll go through it all. Maybe if he does it instead of one of the others, he can make sure that sympathy she’s still feeling for him grows a little.

 

 

\--–--

 

 

Hours later, Jemma steps out of Vault D on sore legs. She would’ve thought Coulson would install a more comfortable chair; if he has to talk to Ward, he might as well get some benefit out of it.

But sore buttocks and cramped legs aside, she has what she came for: not The Complete Lies of Grant Ward—she certainly didn’t need a rehash of that—but reassurance. He believed her. 

She looked a man she hates with every fiber of her being in the eye, told him she loved him, and he believed her. So much so, he just spent five hours trying to make it up to her by listing his own crimes one by one. It was an obvious ploy to earn her sympathy, but the effort he put in is what matters.

She lied to Grant Ward. Successfully. She turns her numb legs towards Coulson’s office to tell him she’s ready. Now she knows she can survive HYDRA.

 


	44. because I love you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Framework AU (written post-4x15 so there's minimal canon compliance)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Don’t you get it? It’s because I love you!” from aos-biospec

“Here, lemme get that for you.”

Jemma drops the box altogether and steps back. It’s not a gracious acceptance, allowing Ward to load the equipment onto the truck bed without her in the way. It’s plain and simple fear. And he sees it. She knows he sees it due to the way his body language shifts from easy comfort to obvious tension.

“Why?” she asks as he lifts the next box.

“Honestly?” he asks. He smiles that charming Grant Ward smile, the one that used to make her go weak in the knees. “Because up until about five hours ago, I was sure Skye had lost it. So this is me making it up to her.”

 _About five hours ago_  being when Jemma found them. Obviously her miraculous return from the dead three years later is proof things in this world aren’t as they appear. Of course, why is  _Ward_  - who is no more than a bit of code in the program designed to keep them happy and docile - accepting that? Shouldn’t any proof of this world’s irrationality drive him to cling all the harder to it?

His gaze sweeps quickly over her. She feels exposed. She’s not certain it’s entirely because he should be her enemy here.

“And,” he adds, bending close and still wearing that smile, “no offense, but heavy lifting’s not really your thing, Simmons.”

She hops up on the bed, out of his way, and watches while he works, helping by pushing boxes farther in after he’s loaded them.  “I’m stronger,” she says, well aware she sounds like a child claiming he‘s capable of beating his father at arm wrestling. “I mean I’m stronger in the real world. I’ve been training.” The body she has here in the Framework is the same as it was the day she contracted the Chitauri virus. She’s not weak, but has none of the muscle mass three years of field work have given her.

She watches his face, waiting to see how he takes the mention of this not being real. Unsurprisingly, his expression is closed off as he nods. At least some things about him are still true to life.

“Good.” His hands flex on the box he has balanced beside her. “That’s real good.”

There seems to be a finality to it when he pushes that last box forward. She makes to jump down, intent on checking up the road for Daisy’s imminent - and belated, she’s trying not to worry - return. Only before she can do more than brace herself to shift her weight up and forward, Ward stops her with a hand lifted in front of her chest.

“Why do you do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“You talk to me and it’s fine and then it’s like you shut down. Why?”

She lifts her chin, meets his eyes squarely, reminds herself this man is not the man who dropped her from the Bus and held a gun to her head and tortured her for long hours. He’s not even a man at all. “You’re not real,” she says, adopting the tone she uses when she’s explaining basic scientific principles to the team and trying not to sound like she thinks they’re idiots. “You’re a very convincing lie - but then Grant Ward always was - but you’re not the real thing. I seem to forget that.”

“Skye doesn’t,” he says before she can lever herself off the truck and make her escape from the conversation. “She never forgets I’m not real. I can see it, the way she looks right through me. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

Jemma twists, leaning her back against the side of the bed and pulling one of her legs up to her chest just to get some distance between them. “I suffered a head injury prior to plugging into this nightmare. That might be why.”

He holds her gaze. Steady. Unconvinced. 

Five months in HYDRA. She spent five bloody months undercover and has been training herself relentlessly in deception ever since. And she can’t even bring herself to lie to the code ghost of a Grant Ward who never was. Lord, she’s pathetic.

She closes her eyes, unwilling to face him when she lets the words slip out. “I love you.” It’s like a crack in a dam. She opens her eyes, focuses on the way her fingers are digging into the denim of her jeans. She wonders if she’ll have bruises or if the Framework will heal her wounds like they never were. “It’s because I love you, all right? I have since the moment I saw you falling after me from the Bus.” He flinches so badly she can see it even though she’s not looking at him. “And it’s never mattered who you really were or what you did to the team or to me. I still loved you. I think part of me always will.”

She knows it’s terrible. Ward  _tortured_  her. She has scars, in the real world, from the tools he used in his attempts to break her. And still she loved him enough to mourn him and to hate Hive for taking his body.

His hand on her knee startles her. Even more when it moves to cover hers. “I jumped,” he says. “I jumped after you. I thought - I don’t know what I thought. Maybe if I could reach you, you’d have more time.”

“You were thinking your cover would jump.”

He ignores her, and his hand lifts hers. His thumb slides down to her wrist. “I saw you pulse beneath me. Saw the light and the wave of electricity that would’ve taken out the Bus.” His eyes are shut, like he’s focusing solely on the feel of her heart pounding away beneath his hand.

But it’s not her heart, she reminds herself. It’s an artificial construct of the Framework. Her real heart is somewhere in the real world, being watched over by Elena. That’s assuming, of course, that her prior death here didn’t cause her to die there, which is a thought she’s been strenuously avoiding ever since pulling herself out of that cadaver drawer at HYDRA HQ and she won’t entertain it now.

“I caught you, tried to wake you up, but…”

“I was dead.”

He nods. His eyes open. He drops her hand. “I know you don’t think I’m real - and maybe I’m not - but I’m just glad you are.”

 


	45. something done right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrett visits the Bus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in honor of the late Bill Paxton

Strong arms help John up the ramp. On his right, Trip’s breathing heavy from the firefight they just came out of. On his left, Grant’s snapping at a squirrelly little agent to close the ramp and relay that they’re on board.  Almost as soon as he does, the plane starts lifting off and by the time John’s in the lab at the back of the cargo bay, the plane’s in the air.

He whistles to himself as Trip starts giving the mousy little thing coming out of the corner a rundown of John’s injuries. “Nice place Coulson’s got himself here.”

“Yeah,” Grant says, voice tight with worry. Aw, it’s cute how much he cares. He keeps sneaking looks at John’s side, at where the implant’s hidden beneath tac gear and camo and one of those fancy undershirts the tech guys claim wicks the sweat away but that just make everything about ten times more uncomfortable. 

“Hey,” John calls, cutting into all the chatter across the lab before it can go on more than a couple sentences. Nobody’s even gotten to introductions yet. Good. “I’m sure Coulson’d like a report on what went wrong down there.”

For a beat, Trip looks torn, unsure whether the operations report is really more important than the medical one. But then he snaps back into line quick enough. “Yes, sir.”

“Fitz?” Grant asks. “You wanna show him the way?”

The squirrelly agent looks pissed about being kicked out of his own lab, but a kind look from Simmons has him going where he’s told.

“Now what’s wrong?” Grant asks the second it’s just the three of them.

“Aw, nothin’,” John says, even while he lifts his leg up onto the lab bench next to him. “Trip’s a worrywart.”

“We’ll see about that, Agent Garrett,” Simmons says. Her exam gloves snap on and there’s an almost mean glint in her eye. That’s not exactly what he’d expect based on her file, but he supposes six months of dealing with Grant and the Cavalry, not to mention Mr. Miracle himself, will do that to an uncertified medic. 

She’s nice though. Gentle. All her fussing comes out more caring than annoyed and her sympathetic looks are a hell of a lot better than he typically gets from SHIELD medical.

“I like her,” John says a few minutes later when she’s stitching up his leg.

Grant’s lips twitch. “Yeah, she’s nice.” So he’s noticed it too. Good.

“You been taking this good care of my boy here?” he asks her.

She’s got her back to Grant, but she throws a smile John’s way. “I’ve been trying. I’m sorry to say he isn’t always truthful when reporting his injuries.”

“I can take care of the bumps and scrapes myself.”

“That may be, but it is  _my_  job. How would you like it if I started shooting the bad guys?”

“Honestly?” Grant asks.

John chuckles, cutting into their fun. “Well ain’t this sweet? I oughta thank you. Grant’s needed someone to get that stick out of his ass for years now. About damn time.”

Grant flinches so bad John thinks he might pull something. Damn good thing Simmons can’t see him do it with her head bent over the bandage she’s sticking down.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” she says, moving up to check John’s pupils. She really is gonna give him a full workup even though he only got airlifted out for the leg. She is cute as a fucking button. “There were some directed efforts on the team’s part.”

Grant makes a sad little noise of discomfort. God, it’s like Christmas come early.

“Can you bring me my stethoscope, Ward?” she asks over her shoulder. “It’s in the third drawer to the left.”

John watches him go digging for it and says softly, “Yeah, but I know my boy. He’s no good at it, got no finesse when he ain’t playin’ a mark, but I know what makes that heart of his go pitter-patter. I’m sure you were plenty of help all on your own.”

Simmons just blinks at him, her cheeks going pink. Behind her, Grant is throwing him a look that’d scare a lesser man. It’s a good thing he hasn’t come back with the stethoscope yet; if Simmons could hear John’s chest right now, she’d know he’s struggling not to laugh his ass off.

“I- I’m not sure what you mean.”

“No? Well, like I said, he ain’t any good with girls- Ah,” John hisses in a breath, “but maybe I’ve said too much.”

Grant comes back with the stethoscope and even has the balls to suggest Simmons go check on Trip instead when she tries to get John’s shirt off. Smart boy. He’d be in for a beating if it wasn’t a necessary save, but still, smart boy.

“I’ll try not to die while you’re gone,” John jokes after her, ensuring she doesn’t stay upstairs too long. Hopefully not long enough to notice Trip’s sunshine smile. “Pretty girl,” he says when she’s out of sight. 

“A little young for you,” Grant says. He crosses his arms, hitches his hip against the lab bench. All in all, looks like the killer he is. John just goes on grinning, he knows his dog won’t bite.

“Smart too,” he goes on. “Some say the smartest ever to come out of SciTech. And she figured out that serum, right? The caterpillar one that’s been giving everybody so much trouble?”

“Centipede,” Grant bites out. “And it was a fluke. I’m pretty sure she and Fitz are still working to figure out how it _didn’t_ kill Peterson.”

John shakes his head sadly. “Shame about him. Good agent. Good man.”

It is hilarious watching Grant try not to roll his eyes. That alone is worth letting that sniper catch him out there.

“Well, I’m sure she’ll get it one of these days. Might help if she loosens up a little though, if she had someone to get her out of those stiff collars and pressed shirts.”

Grant sighs. “I’m really not sure that tracks.”

John shrugs. “Either way. There’s still plenty of other mysteries she can figure out.”

Grant meets his eyes steadily. Holds ‘em. He’s trying real hard to weasel out of this, but John’s not letting him. He didn’t orchestrate this whole rescue mission so Grant could ignore the message he came here to pass along.

Finally Grant turns to lean back against the table. “She is cute,” he admits.

John barks out a laugh. “That’s my boy.” And if John knows him at all, he’ll have Simmons in his bed and his pocket by the time this leg is healed up. With any luck, she’ll be working for John - knowingly or unknowingly, makes no difference to him so long as it gets done - before the next quarterly review.

“Now,” John says, relaxing as best he can while keeping his leg elevated. “I hope you know I expect your firstborn to be named John. Phil Coulson is not edging me out of my godfather spot just because he’s your CO now.”

Grant hangs his head and his hands twitch in that way means he wishes he had a gun in one of ‘em. John finally barks out that laughs. This is easily the best injury of his life.

 


	46. please marry me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arranged marriage AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "please marry me" from batsonthebrain

It’s while she’s getting ready to brush her teeth she realizes she’s shaking. She doesn’t know why. It’s only Grant, who she’s spent a total of twelve hours with in increasing intervals meant to gently lead them to this moment and who she’s spoken to on the phone for fifteen minutes every day they didn’t see each other for the last month. It’s not as though she has cause to fear him.

But she’s still shaking when she sets her toothbrush aside and wipes her face clean. And she knows why.

It  _is_  him. She likes him, perhaps a little more than she’s supposed to at this stage. He’s tall and handsome and quite strong. All silly, physical preferences she listed when she first began this process years ago. But they were  _only_ preferences, she was willing to sacrifice any one or all of them if SHIELD’s matchmaking department could find her a good emotional match. Someone kind, reasonably intelligent - she had little hope of finding her equal in that regard, especially when it was let slip to her that they were unlikely to choose anyone from SciTech - and whose sense of humor and moral compass matched well with hers.

It’s become apparent, ever since they first met five weeks ago, that Grant fills nearly all of the requirements she listed on her initial application. And, even in those cases where he doesn’t, her heart is already rather too invested to care.

Bracing herself, she steps out of the tiny bathroom. Grant’s eyes meet hers immediately, and he gives her that smile that’s so often made her go weak in the knees lately. Just thinking about it yesterday she had to take a moment to collect herself. 

Yes, she definitely likes him too much. 

“You look nice,” he says, going back to zipping up his overnight bag. Which is, she’s ashamed to say, half the size of hers. And she thought she was economizing. He gestures awkwardly to the air above his shoulder. “With your hair down.”

“Thank you.” She fiddles with her hands, afraid if they start shaking again he’ll notice and call this off. She doesn’t want that. She wants tonight to go  _well_. If it doesn’t… “I wasn’t sure what to wear,” she blurts out. She’d thought about something more sexy, had made plans to go shopping days ago, but then the samples she was working with were contaminated and she had to start from scratch and … She wants tonight to go well.

He shrugs, gesturing to his simple shirt and briefs. “I didn’t exactly dress up myself.”

It makes her laugh for some reason. The way he says it or his smile or simply the stress of it all. 

He closes the distance between them while she sobers. There’s no hope of containing her shiver when his fingers slide along her jaw. It’s not the first time he’s touched her so intimately, but each instance seems more potent than the last. Rather than becoming immune to his effects, she’s in danger of becoming drunk on him if her reactions continue progressing as they have. He’s dangerous. For so many reasons.

“We don’t have to do anything,” he says. “This doesn’t have to be about that, it can just be-”

“About getting accustomed to one another.” She knows. She memorized the entire sequence of events after their first encounter. They are, of course, free to back out at any time during the process, to say the match isn’t working out, isn’t what they want. And their counselor was quick to reassure her that many couples do not engage in sexual intercourse on the first of the four prescribed nights together. Some, she said, even wait until after the marriage has been finalized. 

This is about them, about what they need to decide whether they’re suited. It can be whatever they want it to be.

“If you’d rather not…,” she says.

He barks out a laugh so loud and sudden she jumps. He catches her by the shoulders to steady her and apologizes gently. “Sorry, I just …” His hands tighten, though not at all painfully, and his eyes linger on the shapeless pajamas she’s wearing. “I really want to. But I can wait. If that’s what you want.”

“No!” She steps forward, only to bite her lip once she hears how emphatic she sounds. “I mean, I do. Very much. Want to have sex with you, that is.” Goodness, when did she get so tongue-tied. 

At least he seems amused by it, smiling down at her the way he is. He’s so much taller than she is when she’s not wearing her shoes. She feels almost like a child, which she doesn’t like at all. To erase the feeling, she moves closer still and reaches out to brush her fingers lightly against the soft fabric of his shirt; she can just feel the muscles beneath. His stomach draws inward on a faint gasp. His reaction steadies her, lets her know she’s not alone in this and helps her hit the light tone she’s reaching for. “It’s been five weeks. You might be able to wait, but I’m not certain I have that much control.”

His grin widens and one of his hands moves to her jaw again, following it back into her hair. The sensation rolls through her, she could get lost in it if not for his voice. “Well, if we’re both giving in to temptation, would you mind if I did something I’ve been wanting to?”

Eager as she is to move onward with the evening, now they’ve agreed there will be an onward, and to find out what it is that’s been eating away at him - he never gives any sign at all - she can’t help but tease him, just a little more. “That depends. How long have you been wanting?” She slides her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, going up on her toes and draping herself against him. “I’ve been waiting  _weeks_.”

“So have I.” His hands cup her hips. His thumbs find the skin above her waistband, teasing it in the most delightful way.

She decides it’s not wholly inappropriate to be honest. “Since our first meeting.”

One of his eyebrows quirks. Much as she appreciates having a man taller than she is, she does wish he wasn’t quite so tall; otherwise she would have to kiss that brow. She supposes it will just have to wait until she has him beneath her. “Really?” he asks.

“Yes, really,” she says tartly. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how attractive you are. Everyone knows there’s an aesthetic index all operatives are ranked on.”

He chuckles. “We call it the Honeypot Scale, actually.”

She grins, triumphant. “So I’m right.”

“You are.”

“And I’ve been waiting for this.”

He frowns, considering carefully while his thumbs continue doing evil, sinful things, all on two bits of skin no bigger than her microscope slides. “I’m not sure how I feel about this now. Being with a woman who only wants me for my body…” He shakes his head, though in a way that isn’t even attempting at insulted.

She bounces on her toes. She regrets teasing him now. For all she knows, they could’ve been done with his thing and moved on to the main event by now.

“I just gotta know there’s more of a connection here than the physical. What else do you like about me?”

She begins playing with the hairs at the back of his neck and pays careful attention to the way his pupils dilate in response. If he can play dirty, so can she. “You’re smart-”

“Not as smart as you.”

She rolls her eyes. “People who are as smart as me tend to be utter asses. You’re just right.”

He pinches her side. “I can be an ass.”

She shrugs. “Fine. Maybe you’re a little too smart. I’ll live. You’re also kind and caring. Brave, according to your file. And not at all the sort to keep a lady waiting.”

His chest shakes against hers as he holds back laughter. “I’m not?”

“Not. At. All.” She punctuates each word with a kiss, first to his jaw, and ending on his lips when he bends to accommodate her. 

“I still want to do my thing first,” he says against her lips.

She groans and would step away if he weren’t holding her. “Fine.”

He’s still smiling, not the least put-off by her annoyance. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve been waiting to do this just as long as you’ve been waiting for that.” He tips his head towards the woefully unused bed.

Well now he’s piqued her curiosity. Why didn’t he start with that? “What is it?” she asks.

He breathes in deep enough she can feel it where their chests touch. “Will you marry me?” 

She stares, curiosity replaced by confusion. “What?” she asks, and it comes out sounding like a laugh. His expression shutters and his gaze drops from her face as he goes stiff. “I only mean, that’s the point of all this. It goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

“And we’ve got four weeks left, minimum.” His hands flex on her waist. “I’ll wait. If you want, I’ll wait until you know you’re ready. But I’ve wanted to marry you since day one. I wanted you to know. And if you knew too-”

She pulls him down for a kiss. It melts all the cold her laughter brought on and, by the time they both break it for some much needed air, her legs are bumping the edge of the bed.

“Yes,” she pants. She lifts her legs onto the mattress, sitting on her knees so she’s more on his level. “Yes. In four weeks, in a boring office in a boring SHIELD base, I will marry you.” She rests her forehead against his. “Okay?”

He nods. “Okay.” There’s relief in his voice, but none in his eyes when he opens them. All she sees is something dark and enticing. “Now let’s do your thing.”

 


	47. same outfit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye and Jemma find themselves in something of a predicament on their night off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt from thestarfishdancer

“We cannot both go wearing the same outfit,” Skye says, “so you have to change.”

Jemma rounds her workstation to better look Skye up and down. “We look  _completely_ different!” 

Granted, they’re both wearing the same pair of black jeans they both fell in love with and had to buy back in Phoenix. And they’re both wearing leather jackets, but Skye’s is a bright red. And yes, sure, Jemma’s blouse is a very similar shade of bright red, but it is also very low cut where Skye is wearing a turtleneck beneath her jacket. So there. And that’s not even the point!

 “And why would  _I_  have to change? I was ready a full fifteen minutes ahead of you.”

“Only because you’re first on the shower rotation this week! And we look exactly the same. Look.” She grabs Jemma’s arm and spins her so they’re both facing Fitz. “Fitz? Don’t-”

“Nope.” Fitz turns his back on them, taking the hard drive he’s working on with him. “No no nope. Not getting involved in this.”

Skye makes a very undignified sound, the kind that would, under normal circumstances, reduce Jemma to laughter. But these are not normal circumstances and Jemma is not amused. She is not changing! If Skye has a problem with how they’re dressed,  _she_  can change.

The lab doors slide open behind them, followed by, “All right, ladies, you ready to-”

“Ward!” Skye spins them around to face him, only to find him looking perplexed. His brow furrows and he points one finger at them. “ _Right?_ ” Skye demands, her elbow digging into Jemma’s side. “We look the same!”

“We do not!” Jemma insists.

“Actually,” Ward cuts in before they can get to fighting again. “I was gonna ask why you’re wearing my jacket.”

Jemma adjusts the front of it, suddenly rethinking how low her collar goes. “You said I could borrow it.”

“When?”

“When I asked you. Less than an hour ago, when you were getting ready to shower after your workout.”

Ward’s gaze redirects upward, like he’s looking through the bulkhead to some celestial deity - or possibly Coulson - for guidance. “I thought you wanted to borrow a  _gun_.”

“Why would I want a gun for our night out?”

He shakes his head. “Safety?” he asks as though that should be the obvious answer.

“Well that’s what we’re bringing you along for, isn’t it?” she snaps back. Honestly. It’s a fun, carefree night on the town, not a dangerous op in enemy territory.

“You can never be too prepared-”

She cuts him off in the middle of the familiar refrain. “Oh, honestly, this is not a  _mission_. Not everything is life and death.”

“Yeah, everything is. You’re either alive or you’re dead. Those are the only options all the time.”

“You know what?” Skye cuts in, an odd sort of smile on her face. “I think I will change. You two go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Jemma and Ward exchange a look. “Coulson’s never gonna let you borrow Lola,” he points out.

“And if he doesn’t,” Skye says, her elbow again - for some reason - digging into Jemma’s side, “then you two will just have to make the best of it without me. Don’t worry. Seriously.”

As Skye passes him by, Grant gives Jemma a look she takes to mean  _has Skye been in contact with anything alien?_  Behind his back, Skye winks and gives her a thumbs up before heading up the stairs. Jemma thinks Fitz might snicker from his corner.

“Let’s just go,” she says, hoping her blouse will make it less obvious her cheeks are burning. “I have the feeling she’ll be a while.”

“Okay,” Ward says, sounding confused. But he does follow. Jemma tells herself she isn’t mortified by the prospect of a night alone with him. Worse comes to worst, she decides, she can always ask his advice in getting revenge on Skye for the set up.

 


	48. wasn't meant to hear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Framework AU + Grant's alive AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: things you said that I wasn't meant to hear

Grant’s mind is buzzing with plans and contingencies, all of which are looking a lot more orderly - though no less insane - after his shower, but he’s still a specialist; so even though his mind’s preoccupied, his body stops him just on the verge of exiting the tiny motel bathroom.

“-with me on this,” Skye (or Daisy or Quake or whatever; Grant doesn’t give a fuck what she wants to be called) is saying out in the room. It’s her tone that holds him back, soft and urgent. Whatever she and Jemma are talking about, they don’t want him hearing.

“I do remember the plan,” Jemma says. It’s level enough, but there’s a hint of evasiveness in it. Probably because she’s been having memory problems too.

Grant remembers  _this_  world,  _this_  life. Him and Jemma and what they’ve built - what he  _thought_  they built, turns out it was just a computer program - together. He gets flashes of the real world. Ugly, painful visions that leave his heart aching and his hands itching to hold her tight and never let go.

Skye remembers everything about the outside and nothing about the world in here. Grant thinks she’d be only too happy to kick him to the curb and run off alone with Jemma, but she needs someone who understands this place. And, if she’s smart, she knows he’d never let the two of them get far.

As for Jemma … She was hurt, she says, when she came in. Head injury. He doesn’t know exactly what it means, but he knows sometimes she’s warm and soft and loving the way she was yesterday, and sometimes she’s colder than ice. 

“We get everyone out,” she says, reciting the plan same as she did when she told it to him, “and hope they’re in good enough shape physically to escape wherever Radcliffe’s holding them.”

“We get  _our people_  out,” Skye says earnestly. “They’re the priority. Right?”

Jemma’s quiet for a long time, but she must nod or something because eventually Skye says, “Right. Good. Just so we’re on the same page.”

Grant gives it another minute. Flushes the toilet, runs the water, lets them think he was doing anything other than listening in. He comes out smiling like nothing’s wrong, like they didn’t just agree to leave him to rot.

“You get those plans?” he asks.

In answer, Skye only gestures to the TV, which she’s using as a second monitor for her laptop. 

Grant doesn’t let himself get stuck on Jemma when he looks past her, too much focus will only make her feel guilty and make them both suspicious. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice her though. Averted eyes. Mouth set in a frown. And thumb curled beneath her first two fingers, keeping it out of sight while it toys with her wedding rings.

He resists the urge to fist his left hand. Whatever she’s thinking or feeling or remembering, doesn’t matter. This world may not be real, but as far as he’s concerned, he and Jemma are. So she and Skye can make all the plans they like, he’s not letting anyone steal his wife away, not even Jemma herself.

 


	49. a violent kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After months away, Grant brings HYDRA a peace offering (2x18 AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: a violent kiss

“What can I say?” Grant asks with a smile. “After Whitehall’s death, I decided to go back to my roots.” He raps his knuckles against the hard planes of Mike’s body armor. “Turns out a few of John’s old projects were just waiting for someone to show up, take the reigns again.”

Mike’s got that cool, lifeless cyborg look down. Doesn’t mean Grant can’t see the promise of very brutal future retribution in his eyes though. Whatever. Grant’s got bigger worries at the moment. Like that List doesn’t seem to care.

“Surprising as that may be,” List says, eyeing Mike critically from his seat on the other side of the jump jet’s lounge, “we did recover all of CyberTek’s pertinent research from the military. If you have nothing more to offer than a few enhanced soldiers fresh out of mothballs-”

“Jemma,” Grant says, cutting him off. He turns to his right, where Jemma is standing opposite Mike. “You wanna show the good doctor some of the improvements you’ve made?”

Her lips curl into a pleasant but empty smile. “Happy to comply.”

She crosses the narrow sitting area, tapping at the tablet she brought along as she goes.  _Now_  List is interested, though not in a way Grant appreciates.

“Is she one of Whitehall’s?” he asks.

“Yes.” Grant’s proud of how evenly the word comes out. Most of the crap Whitehall pulled was typical Red Skull wannabe stuff, but brainwashing Jemma still feels like a personal slap in the face. “SHIELD sent her undercover; I guess they thought they could use our own tricks on us.” He forces a low chuckle. “She was too valuable to kill - you probably know her better as half of FitzSimmons?” List’s faint nod of recognition says yes. “So Whitehall decided to be merciful.”

Jemma’s finished pulling up her files and bends down to better show List, guiding him through the adjustments she made to Mike’s systems and explaining the improvements.

List barely listens. “Pretty thing,” he says after only the first item on what Grant knows is a pretty long list. She was never too impressed with CyberTek’s work. “Daniel always did like his toys.” And apparently so does List; he’s got his hand sliding up and down the back of Jemma’s thigh while she resumes talking.

Grant curls his toes in his boots instead of fisting his hands where List and his guards will see. Jemma prattles on while List keeps right on fondling her, happy to comply and all that shit.

“You get the idea,” Grant says after she makes it through only two more of her adjustments. She blinks up at him, mildly startled to be cut off. “I’m just looking for a piece of the pie,” he says with open arms and a smile.

“We’re always interested in new advancements to the human machine,” List muses, eyes on Jemma. Grant’s gotta wonder if he means the kind she talked about or if he considers what Whitehall did to her brain an improvement. With a decisive sigh, List slaps her ass, sending her back over to Grant. “I’d like my people to take a look at your Tin Man. And to see what this one can do with the subjects we already have on site.”

“Sounds great,” Grant says, smile still in place as Jemma resumes her position at his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

They’re not even in the air yet when List says something about a detour, something about a Gifted they’ve been tracking, but Grant’s not listening. He barely has the presence of mind to give List permission to borrow Mike for the extraction. All he’s thinking about is getting Jemma into one of the jump jet’s back rooms.

She follows obediently, doesn’t ask where they’re going or why. She  _does_  make a faint note of distress when he tosses her tablet away, but it’s drowned out by the  _oomph_  she lets out when he pushes her against the closed door.

He kisses her. Hard enough she writhes against him, fingers curling uncertainly in the front of his shirt while he pours all his frustration into her and hates himself all the more for doing it. She doesn’t deserve his anger, just like she didn’t deserve to have that bastard’s hands all over her during that interview.

Just the thought of him - of the way he touched her and talked about her like she was a  _thing_ ; he called her a fucking  _toy_  - has his blood boiling again and he nearly tears Jemma’s blouse open. Her pale breasts are heaving like she’s some goddamn heroine on the cover of some trashy romance novel. “I’ve got you, baby,” he promises, “just hold on.” It’s the closest he can get to promising to tear that fucker’s face off while they’re still on this plane. Her pulse flutters beneath his lips as he makes his way down her neck.

“H-happy to comply,” she stutters out.

It’s like a bucket of cold water. He freezes, one thumb hooked beneath the waist of her jeans, his other hand palming her breast. He slowly extracts both and takes her head in his hands, resting his forehead against hers.

She can’t say no. Not while List is sure to be listening in. She can’t tell him to get a hold of himself or calm down. She can only act like the perfect little wind-up doll Whitehall made of her. Because they have a mission. Using HYDRA’s resources to track down the teleporter who took Skye so Coulson can lead them on what will probably be an even crazier mission than this one to rescue her.

Hopefully, whatever that mission is, Jemma won’t insist on being involved where she doesn’t need to be. Not that he wants this little trip down memory lane to traumatize her, but he’s kinda hoping it’s shaken her up enough she won’t volunteer for anything else.

He kisses her forehead and steps back. “Cover yourself up,” he says coldly, hoping anyone listening will blame his sudden change in attitude on him just being a possessive ass. Which he is.

“Of course,” she says in that same cool tone she used with List. He can see her hands shaking as she does up her buttons. Fuck.

He steps in close again to hide her trembling from any cameras that might be watching. His knuckles trail over her cheek. She’s still in character, but she tips her head the smallest bit into his touch; he hopes that means he’s forgiven. “After this,” he says softly, “after List gives us what we want, we’ll take down SHIELD. You’ll finally get to pay them back for what they did to you. Would you like that?”

Her breathing hitches. They both know what he’s really saying: after they play nice with Coulson, they’ll get revenge on Bobbi Morse and her fake SHIELD for abandoning Jemma, for thinning Coulson’s resources so he had to send her in at all. 

Coulson won’t be happy. Grant can already see he’s not planning on taking SHIELD back by force - he’d rather rebuild SHIELD with Gonzales’ help than get revenge. But Grant’s not that guy, he’s not in this for the greater good. Every second Whitehall spent wrapping Jemma around his finger, every terrible thing he made her do, every night since that bastard’s death she’s woken up from a screaming nightmare … that other SHIELD is gonna pay for all of it.

Jemma smiles, leans a little into him, and, with a vicious gleam in her eye that’s way too warm to be compliance, says what any good little HYDRA agent would say if asked the same question: “Nothing would make me happier.” 

 


	50. hug from behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A routine intelligence gathering op goes very wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: hug from behind
> 
> Warning for brief, gory violence

Jemma doesn’t like to lie, especially not to her friends, but she’s going to have to lie to Skye when she returns to the Playground. She avoided it this morning. Saying she was headed off on a covert mission for Coulson was enough to distract Skye from the purpose of the mission - they spent a full twenty minutes talking about Jemma’s increased aptitude for subterfuge and then it was time for Jemma to be off - but when she gets back to base, Skye will want to know what it was about. And when that happens, Jemma will absolutely have to lie.

She closes her fist tight around the flash drive. On it are the autopsy reports on the ten victims Cal murdered while in this town. It was over two years ago now, but Coulson wanted to know as much as possible about Skye’s father.

If the coroner’s face when Jemma asked for these specific files was any indication, it isn’t good. 

She sighs and steps forward, out of the way of a group of men marching past her down the narrow hall. She reaches out to hit the button for the elevator once more, just for something to do, and feels an arm close like a vice around her shoulders.

“Hello, Simmons.”

Her blood freezes as Ward tugs her against his chest. It’s only once he has his other arm wrapped around her waist and his chin resting just above her ear that she remembers the countless self-defense sessions May’s put her through in recent months. When she reports this little encounter (assuming she lives to do so), she’ll be in for countless more.

“Tell me,” Ward goes on as one of the lackeys he’s brought with him lights up the down arrow beneath the up she already depressed. “What brings HYDRA’s most wanted mole out into the light of day, hm?”

The other lackey chuckles as though Ward’s made some joke.

The flash drive digs into Jemma’s palm. There’s nothing damning on it, nothing it would be better for them not to know, but if Ward knows SHIELD is looking to Skye’s father, he might use it in yet another attempt to manipulate her. She wonders if she can drop the drive without it being noticed.

Ward squeezes her, just tightly enough she knows she’s expected to answer.

“None of your business,” she grinds out through clenched teeth.

She can feel the bastard’s smile against her temple. “HYDRA decides what its business is. And anything Coulson cares about enough to risk you-” he straightens and the arm around her shoulders lifts away so that he can tug at her hair- “is definitely our business.”

She lifts her chin. She won’t give him or HYDRA anything.

“Fine,” Ward says after a few seconds of silence, “we have ways of making you talk. Can you say, ‘happy to comply,’ Simmons?”

Her gut churns with dread as Ward’s back-up laughs again. They’re eager to see her stripped of her free will, and she struggles not to think of why exactly that might be. 

A ding far too pleasant for Jemma’s current situation sounds, and the doors slide open. Ward shoves her forward, tugging at her hip as he does, so that she spins. Her back slams against the far wall of the elevator, knocking the air from her lungs. One of the lackeys - the dumber looking one, now that she can see them both properly - steps in before she can lunge for the close door button.

He’s slightly shorter than Ward but broader, making him seem far larger than he is as he looms over her. He’s grinning in a manic sort of way that makes her blood run cold and has her wishing she’d brought a gun on what was meant to be a simple intel extraction from a purely civilian source. She tears her eyes away from him as the other steps inside. He’s smiling too, an oily grin that has her skin crawling. The thought of spending any amount of time with these two … she’d rather skip ahead to the brainwashing, frankly.

And then the oily grin is gone. Or, more precisely, it’s splattered across the wall to Jemma’s left. 

The remaining lackey spins, his face contorted in a confused sort of horror. Before he’s got his feet firmly beneath him again, his entire body reels back. The bar beneath Jemma’s hands shakes with the force of his skull hitting it on the way to the floor. 

Jemma gapes, so caught off guard by the sudden carnage that she doesn’t even realize Ward’s stepped into the car until he speaks. 

“Seriously?” he demands. He uses his gun to press the button for the parking lot beneath this level before stowing it in the back of his jeans. “Whitehall’s got a six-figure price on your head, and Coulson sends you out to check into  _Cal_?” He shakes his head. “I’ll tell you everything to know about the guy right now: he likes cutting people into tiny pieces and Skye. That’s it. End of story.”

“You knew why I was here?” she asks. Probably she should be asking something else - like why he shot his own people - but for some reason that’s the question her brain gets stuck on.

“It’s the only thing you could be here for. Unless the hospital cafeteria’s waffle Wednesday really is that good?”

She shakes her head, not in answer, but because Ward is completely ridiculous.

The sound of his boots squelching in the gore that’s pooling around their feet alerts her that he’s moved, but with the wall at her back and a corpse on either side of her, she can only let him cup her face between his hands.

“You okay?”

She squares her shoulders. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve been captured by HYDRA agents.”

He grins. “Attagirl.” His hands drop to her shoulders as the doors open. “Now. Has Trip taught you how to hotwire a car yet?”

.

.

“And then he let you go?” Coulson presses later, sounding disbelieving. Even May, who’s been listening from the door to stop anyone coming in, has slightly widened eyes.

“I was as shocked as you,” Jemma says. She opens her hands for want of an answer. 

Ward walked her down half a row of cars before finding one he deemed “good enough” for her to escape the HYDRA agents keeping watch outside and then he sent her on her way. Just like that.

Well, there was also the request that she pass along a few messages to the others. More excuses to Fitz for injuring him, another promise to bring Skye to her parents, and what she’s certain is a trap masquerading as intelligence for Coulson. But all of that she keeps to herself.

Jemma doesn’t like to lie to her friends, but she’ll do it when she has to.

 


	51. soulmates / cuddling / pregnancy (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John sees Grant off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: a prequel to the [soulmates/cuddling/pregnancy drabble](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8423971/chapters/23199219)
> 
> You don't necessarily have to read that first but it's definitely happier than this one so you might wanna save it for after.

The contours of the standard pilot’s seat in a quinjet aren’t exactly what Grant’s aching muscles need, but they are familiar enough to offer some relief. He breathes out a slow breath as he settles, careful to keep it quiet on account of his not being alone.

“Don’t lose track of the mission,” John says, slamming a hand down on the headrest. The force reverberates through the cushioning and leather into Grant’s bones. He holds back a groan. “You’ve got a job to do, and it’s not playing house. Twenty-four hours to get the hard drive.”

“It might take longer than that,” Grant says, tone carefully casual. He’s not a child, he doesn’t need to be  _reminded_  to do his damn job. John’s mouth turns down in a dangerous kind of frown; insubordination isn’t an option. “Jemma,” Grant reminds him quickly. 

John goes back to smiling. “Ah, you’ll figure something out. You didn’t get top scores in Seduction for nothing.”

A wave of disgust sweeps through Grant. Sure, he’s used some of those skills on Jemma, but for  _fun_. Mutually beneficial, completely above board fun. He’d never play his soulmate like that. “She’s pregnant,” he reminds John, unable to keep the bite out of his voice. “If she’s found somewhere safe, it won’t be easy to convince her to leave it.”

 _Especially_  after all the shit John pulled. Having Nash bring up the pregnancy to double-down on his psychic claims, and then at the Hub, saying he planned on using Jemma and the kid to force Grant to work for HYDRA. Grant’ll be lucky if he can get Jemma to leave this safe haven of Coulson’s before their kid is old enough to drive.

“I’m sure you’re up for it,” John says. “And just think! If she’s that concerned about safety, all we gotta do is set her up in a nice, secure lab, and she won’t give a damn about the rest of it. You might not even have to take the kid.”

Grant’s so caught off-guard by the implication, he’s echoing the words back before he thinks better of it. “‘Take the kid’?”

“Well, yeah.” There’s something dangerous in John’s tone, made worse because he’s still smiling through it. “Best way to scare the little lady in line is through the kid. I’ve been hoping we wouldn’t have to, of course, she’s not too far along and I could really use her on the GH-325 yesterday, but if it came down to it…”

John’s brought Jemma up a lot the last few days. On the quinjet after Grant shot Hand, he said how he wished Grant could’ve brought her. When he showed Raina around, he said Jemma would’ve been a better scientist than any they already had on hand. At the Fridge, he mused that she’d love to get her hands on the gravitonium.

At the time none of it seemed too bad, it all echoed Grant’s own wishes that she was there with him instead of off god-knew-where with the others. But now he’s gotta wonder if he’s imagining John’s annoyance that he didn’t think bringing his pregnant soulmate on a prisoner transfer was a good idea. And was John just being his usual, lovable ass self when he suggested having Jemma study the gravitonium? Or was he thinking of using it as an enticement? Or a threat?

“Yeah,” Grant hears himself saying as his mind starts replaying those moments, running through them for signs of something more. He digs the fingernails of his left hand into his palm to shut it down. He’s gotta focus. “Yeah, I know. I guess I just never planned on the uprising making things so easy.”

John laughs and slaps the headrest again. “Got that right.”

He smiled just like that when he threatened Jemma at the Hub. Grant wasn’t there, but he saw the surveillance footage after the fact. He told himself it was a play, a smart play too, meant to keep Coulson from backpedaling on his suspicion that Grant might’ve had some ulterior motive when he shot Nash. But there’s no one to trick here, so why’s John smiling like that again and saying all the same things?

He watches John turn away but doesn’t move to fire up the engines. He can see exactly how the next few months are gonna play out. 

It’ll take more than a day of working on Jemma to get her to come with him, way more, and pushing her before she’s ready will only have her digging her heels in harder. And once she knows why he really wanted her out of there? That he’s  _HYDRA_? She’ll fight him every day, every hour. And when the kid is born, his little son or daughter, John will be done playing nice. He’ll take Jemma’s baby from her - or order Grant to do it - until she agrees to work on the GH-325, on every drug and bioweapon HYDRA wants her genius brain involved in. 

She’ll hate it. Hate John and HYDRA and all of it. But Grant? He doesn’t think there’s a word for what she’ll feel for him.

He doesn’t make a decision, not one he remembers anyway. All he knows is one minute he’s sitting there, imagining Jemma’s face when she realizes he’s betrayed her again, and the next he’s standing, gun in hand.

 _He_  may not make a conscious decision, but it must’ve been pretty obvious on his face. John’s already got his own gun lifted, already aimed right at Grant’s chest.

“Too slow, kid.” 

Grant can’t breathe, can’t even think. He loves John. He’s as good as family. He can’t hurt him, can’t even believe that John would hurt him. Not even while John’s smiling and moving his finger to the trigger.

But years of carefully honed instincts kick in while his brain’s still struggling to catch up. He fires first. His gun is still pointed at the floor and the bullet ricochets. John dodges, catches it in the thigh. Grant steps forward, turns to the side, makes his body a smaller target even as he lifts the gun, aims.

At the same moment his finger depresses the trigger, his mind snaps back into gear. 

He sees John. Sees shock and disbelief, feels a heart-crushing agony.

And then John’s down. Bullet in his head.

It’s over.

More than ten years, nearly half his life Grant’s been loyal to John. And now he’s killed him. 

Everything after that is a blur of shaking hands and clenching stomach. He wants to break down, bury his face in John’s chest and weep like a baby, but instinct carries him through this too. The shock protects him, lets his body run on autopilot - take the plane up, get out over the ocean before anyone on the ground realizes John never disembarked, open the bay doors - while his mind dances from thought to thought behind a shield of ice and numbness.

John breaking him out of prison. John smiling over his first kill. John charming Jemma with stories about him. John smiling proudly the day he graduated Ops. John threatening Jemma, threatening their kid, threatening him.

He relives a thousand moments and a thousand more with nothing to do with John at all, memories from childhood or his work that sneak in without rhyme or reason. He swears he spends ten minutes thinking about the lamp in a hotel room in Lisbon.

And then he’s out of it. He’s back. He’s sitting in the pilot’s seat, manning a quinjet that’s just crossed over the US-Canadian border. 

Somewhere in that great white north is his soulmate. And his child. And his team. 

That’s his whole world up there, everything he has left. He pushes the engines a little harder, eager to be home.

 


	52. keep you safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma and Grant run into each other beneath San Juan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I just want to keep you safe."

The fear is draining slowly out of Jemma (it shouldn’t be; if anything, she should be more frightened now, but her own neurochemistry is working against her, tricking her into feeling safe when she’s anything but), and its absence leaves her weak in the knees. She’d like nothing more than to sink to the floor and stay there until one of the others comes to retrieve her, but as there is quite a lot of blood oozing onto the tile, she’s left with no choice but to remain standing.

“Okay, we’re clear,” Ward says, turning away from the door. “If anyone was close enough to hear that, they’d be here by now.”

She stares into the glassy eyes of Agent Styer. He was one of those sent on the mission to retrieve Donnie so many months ago. And now he’s dead. Killed by a man who Jemma could have sworn - and she imagines Styer would have said the same - was on his own side until the bullets started flying. 

“Why are you doing this?” 

His forehead furrows as he considers her. “I saved your life.”

She shakes her head - which is a mistake, as it turns out. She drifts to the wall as her balance fails her and only just presses a steadying hand to it before Ward can reach her. “Why are you doing  _any_  of this?” 

This isn’t the first time he’s proven himself a traitor to HYDRA since his escape. Leaving Bakshi for them was easily explainable as a way of making room for himself in Whitehall’s organization, but little else was. The flash drive left out like a gift at a formerly HYDRA lab they cleared last month. Hunter being captured, only to wake up hours later in the back of a van with a dendrotoxin headache and five dead HYDRA agents. Agent Palamas, who walked up to Jemma on the street four days ago, wearing the empty smile of compliance, and said she was happy to hand herself over.

The team has spent countless hours wondering over this behavior, trying to make sense of Ward’s motivations. 

(That is a lie. The  _team_  may wonder over it, but Jemma never has. Not for a single, solitary moment. She can’t bear to when the answer is written plain as day across her ribs.)

There’s a pitying note to Ward’s consideration of her, like he knows she’s avoided thinking about this topic and why. “I’m trying to protect you,” he says. “You made a lot of enemies, going undercover like that; I just want to keep you safe.”

“Why?” She would snatch the word back if she could. She doesn’t want to know. She thinks if she hears him say it, she will shatter. So she quickly forces him away from the answer she can’t bear to hear by changing the question. “You tried to kill me.”

“I was trying to  _protect_  you.” 

She knows that tone, that expression. Hearing them now, she has to wonder if his defense of his actions last spring weren’t  _entirely_ manipulations meant to free him from Vault D. Perhaps they were lies he had to tell himself to keep sane. It’s not just the familiar insistence in his voice, now she can detect the note of fear underlying it, like a child frightened of a punishment he knows he deserves.

He steps over the bodies, and she’s too busy pondering over his mental state, blissfully following that train of thought away from the cold reality she’d rather avoid, to pull away in time. His hands wrap around her upper arms, just above her elbows. Even through her sleeves, his touch is pleasant, comforting, like warm cocoa on a winter afternoon. She wants to fall into him.

And he into her, it seems. His eyelids flutter when he makes contact, and his breath hisses as if in something not-quite-pain. He wasn’t expecting that.

“I love you,” he says.

It takes her a moment - her heart does not shatter, it  _sings_ , and it’s a difficult sensation to overcome - but she manages a belated huff of disbelief.

“I do,” he insists.

“You don’t know me. We haven’t even stood face-to-face since…” Since that dark morning in Vault D. She woke in agony that was made all the more intense when she discovered his name written beneath her breasts. Hatred at him and anger at fate for saddling her with him drove her down to his cell. 

In her fragile mental state, she managed to convince herself that his agreement with her demands was due to lack of interest, that he still wanted Skye and didn’t care for her at all. She nearly hoped it was true.

Ward brushes the stray hairs that have come free of their tie away from her face. This time she does lean into his touch. She shuts her eyes as a note of contentment escapes her; she’d rather not see his face.

“I knew you on the Bus,” he says softly, “and I’ve had five months to fall in love with the memory of the woman I knew then.” His fingers are still in her hair, the heel of his hand rests at the edge of her cheek.

She wants to lift her own hands, find the stubble he’s taken to sporting lately, feel the burn of it beneath her palm.

She should push him away.

As neither is a feasible possibility, she only sighs and says, “I don’t know you.”

He sighs in return, and his forehead rests against hers. She swallows up the scent of him - the spice of some manly soap mixed with the iron of blood, the damp taste of sweat from the fight, the lingering hint of gunfire clinging to his clothes. He is a monster, her soulmate, a killer.

“You do,” he says, like he can read her mind. “You’ve seen all the best and worst parts of me. I won’t pretend I can be that guy from the Bus, not for real, but I can make parts of him into part of me. I’ll show you.” She can feel his lips hovering over hers. “You’ll see. You’ll love me too.”

She doesn’t hate him. The monster, the killer. She doesn’t hate him and that terrifies her more than the bodies strewn around him and the blood still clinging to his hands in her hair. 

His grip on her tightens briefly and then falls away entirely. Only the wall behind her keeps her from falling. She just catches sight of him throwing another look over his shoulder at her before he’s darting into the hall. Shouts and the  _fwip_  of ICERs follow. Her team is coming.

“You’re wrong,” she says after him, but there’s no hope of him hearing it, soft as it is, far gone as he is. It’s just as well. 

She won’t fall in love with him because she already has.

 


	53. terrible idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief s1 AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "You know this is a terrible idea, right?"

There’s blood on Jemma’s blouse. She has to concentrate hard to pick it out among the slightly abstract floral pattern, but it’s definitely blood. 

She struggles to remember how it got there as the bouncing of the vehicle lifts her head. The moment her eyes focus on the men huddled with her in the dark confines of the van, she remembers exactly how the blood came to be on her shirt.

Her heartbeat picks up as the fear she felt earlier comes rushing back; her headache increases as a result, bringing with it nausea that is not helped by the bumpy ride. But with the fear comes the certainty too that while these men, whoever they may be, might have been able to track her down in the middle of a grocery run, of all things, they will not succeed in their no doubt diabolical plans. 

“Run,” Ward said while they were huddled behind the apples. “You go out the back and you don’t stop until you get to the Bus or a cop.”

“Ward-” she began, but he was in no mood for arguments.

“I’ll cover you.” Her eyes went to his gun. She hadn’t even known he’d brought one (on a  _grocery run_ ). He cupped her jaw in his free hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. The intensity in them scared her in a way completely different from the bullets whizzing overhead. “And I’ll be right behind you. I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and she ran while he provided her with cover fire.

And now there’s blood on her shirt. 

She struggles to focus as another bump rattles her bones. Her mouth hurts, and she can taste iron. Gingerly, she works her jaw and swallows until she feels reasonably certain she can speak. “You are aware this is a terrible idea, right?”

Almost as if she’d planned it, an explosion sounds outside and the van swerves sideways. The men around her grip their weapons tighter. One has the sense to steady her to keep her from falling. 

She fights through the pain to fix a pleasant smile on her face. She is no fan of violence, but these men destroyed a small town grocer, terrorized its customers, and kidnapped her; they deserve everything that’s coming to them.


	54. look! a distraction!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Ward has been kidnapped

“Look!” James yells. “A distraction!” He’d point too, but his hands are kinda tied to the arms of the chair. 

Everybody looks. At  _him_. Stupid SHIELD, they can’t even fall for a trick right. 

They all go back to talking - too quiet for James to hear, jerks - except for one guy, the one who knocked out Ben and who looks like he’s still trying not to laugh at James’s great distraction plan.

“Hey,” he says. Like they’re friends. “How’re you doing over here? You comfortable?”

James has no idea what he’s supposed to say. These people kidnapped him, they might’ve killed Ben, and now one of them’s asking if he’s okay? SHIELD is  _crazy_.

That, James knows how to handle. He remembers a few months ago when a man in glasses came to see him. (Mum broke a teacup. He doesn’t know why he remembers that, but he always remembers how weird it was that she wasn’t bothered at all even though it was one of her favorites, one his grandma gave her.) He stared and stared and said things James didn’t understand, things that made Dad’s face do that thing where he doesn’t  _look_  angry but that just means he’s  _extra super_  angry.  Later, Mum told him the man with glasses was crazy; she said that was why Dad killed him.

“My Dad is gonna kill you,” he says. His voice doesn’t shake at all. He thinks Dad’ll be proud when he tells him.

The guy nods. “He might.” 

He doesn’t look scared. But he should be. James’s dad can kill  _anybody_ , even an Avenger, and he’ll definitely kill this guy for kidnapping James. He’s probably on his way here right now with a hundred guys. He’ll take care of these SHIELD agents in no time!

“Your name is James, isn’t it?”

James doesn’t know why this guy knowing his name makes him feel cold, but it does.

The guy goes down on his knees so they’re eye-to-eye. His smile’s friendly. But they’re  _not friends_. “James? My name’s Phil. I know you’re scared and I’m sorry for that, but I promise you’ll be with your parents again soon.” 

He stares at James for a long time, but it’s not creepy like it was when the man in glasses did it. James doesn’t feel like he’s one of Mum’s white mice in their cages. It’s like … like when Dad sometimes comes by his room after he’s been gone a few days and he thinks James is sleeping but he’s really not and Dad just stands in the hall and watches him for a while. It kinda feels like James is safe. 

But there’s no way he’d be safe with SHIELD, even if they hadn’t probably killed Ben.

“They’re both with you?” Phil asks suddenly. “Your parents? Your dad  _and_  your mom? They both made it away from Whitehall?”

James recognizes the name, it’s been said loads of times since that day Dad killed the man with glasses and they all had to move, leave all their stuff behind and just go. Mum said they’d get new stuff, but James doesn’t like his new action figures nearly as much as he liked his old Mr. Squidward. (Not that he’ll tell anyone. He’s not a  _baby_  who needs a stuffed animal to sleep at night. It’d just make it easier is all.)

Phil’s mouth does this weird thing and his eyes blink a lot before he asks, “Is your mom okay? Is she safe?”

Mum’s important. Dad told James that once when he asked why there were always extra guards whenever Mum took him out for ice cream, not just the guards that always follow James around. He said that even though Mum can’t fight the way he can, she’s one of the most dangerous people in the world. She’s the smartest person Dad’s ever met, he said, and that makes her pretty smart.

James knows enough to know what Dad really meant is Mum’s  _valuable_. People want to steal her the way SHIELD’s stolen James.

He grips the arms of his chair tight and feels his bones shake. “I’m  _not_  gonna let you hurt her,” he says.

Phil stares at him and real slow, like it’s creeping up on him, his mouth curls up in a smile. “You sound just like her when you say that,” he says. He leans forward, like he’s telling James a secret. “And I’d never hurt Jemma or you. I promise you that.”

He walks back to the others, leaving James alone. 

He hopes Dad gets here soon and kills them all.

 


	55. I warned you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Fitz tries to kill John, Grant's had enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt from thestarfishdancer

“And that’s exactly why I told you not to do that,” John says.

Grant’s knuckles sting. He knows how to throw a punch, but after the week he’s had, his hand’s getting real tired of running into things, heads especially. But it was worth it. The cry of pain and the way Fitz is bent over, holding his nose while blood drips onto the pristine lab floor, it feels damn good. 

“Grant.” Jemma’s soft call isn’t enough to snap him out of it, but it is enough to remind him there are other things to be dealt with than just Fitz thinking he can kill John.

He stalks across the lab and in three quick strides is close enough to drag Jemma to him. She’s stiff at first, surprised by the attention and maybe even a little scared, but she melts quick enough. Her body molds to his, and her hands tug him closer, and all the while Fitz watches, sees the woman he wants clinging to, as he put it, “a murdering traitor.”

And she keeps clinging too; when Grant breaks the kiss she’s in no shape to stand on her own, so he keeps an arm around her back while he fixes Fitz with a smile. “You were saying?” he asks. So much for all his talk about Jemma never letting him touch her again.

“Simmons?” Fitz asks, his voice shaky. He might finally be getting the lay of the land here; Grant’d feel bad if it were anyone else.

Jemma ignores him to give Grant one of her best glares. “I asked you not to hurt Fitz.”

He frowns, wracking his brain for when that’s supposed to have happened. “You mean before South Ossetia? I thought that was just that mission.”

She huffs. It’s adorable. “Do I really have to ask you  _every time_?”

Grant looks over her head to John. They both nod. “Yeah.”

“You can’t be all that surprised he wanted to get a shot in, Doc,” John adds, “you nearly put a hit out on him yourself, once upon a time.”

Jemma whirls out of Grant’s embrace. “It was very early in our partnership,” she says to Fitz, “we were practically still rivals!”

Fitz is, unsurprisingly, horrified. He’s looking at Jemma like he’s never seen her before, kind of the way Skye looked at Grant after she figured him out. He wishes he had a photo of that, it’d be a kick to compare them side-by-side.

“Oh come here,” Jemma snaps and moves to grab her medkit from the cupboard. 

Grant’s not all that excited about watching her clean up the mess he made of Fitz, but the guard on the lab is freaking Santoro. The man’s completely loyal to and completely terrified of Jemma. He hops to, forcing Fitz to a stool, before Grant can shut her plan down, leaving him with nothing to do but pace while his girlfriend fusses over another man. And even that doesn’t last long because John catches his eye about thirty seconds in and puts a stop to it.

It wasn’t worth it. Oh, the punch was nice when he did it, but now that it’s got him this? A front row seat to watching Jemma tut over Fitz’s broken nose - his  _one injury_  when Grant’s sporting dozens? It’s worse than letting John lay into him back in Cuba.

He knows she’ll never really turn her back on Fitz, but he also knows the reverse isn’t true. Fitz will absolutely turn his back on her now that he knows she’s one of them. And then Jemma - and Grant - can be done with the little shit for good.

He cannot wait until she realizes Fitz is never gonna forgive her so they can move on already.

“There,” she pronounces. She hasn’t done more than clean up the blood and give him an ice pack. The bone still needs to be set, but probably she’s figuring he won’t thank her for that. In fact…

“Are you expecting a thank you?” he asks testily. Jemma’s smile falls, and Grant shifts his weight off the counter, considering the wisdom of making another go at Fitz.

“Santoro will take you to the Cage,” she says stiffly before Grant can decide either way. “And you will  _not be harmed again_.” She gives John a stern glare. Usually Grant gets a kick out of her aiming those at one of the most dangerous men on the planet, but right now? When her pluck is only gonna get her exactly what she wants and Grant doesn’t?

John tips his head in acquiescence. 

Fuck. Grant hates this. 

Jemma’s so damn pleased she bounces on her toes and kisses Fitz on the cheek. “Don’t make a nuisance of yourself,” she warns and sends him on his way while Grant is still struggling to breathe.

He ignores Fitz - he knows where Santoro’s taking him, there’ll be time for him later - and focuses on Jemma. He blinks and he’s looming over her, no memory of crossing the lab or of boxing her in with hands resting on the edge of her lab bench behind her. That’s dangerous.  _She’s_  dangerous, John always said. But in that good way, the way that makes her exciting. 

Well, he’s had enough excitement for one day. He thinks it’s time he returned the favor.

“He’s my  _friend_ ,” she says. “We’ve been over this.” Her hand runs down his cheek, and his breath catches when her nails drag at his stubble. Oh yeah, definitely time he turned the tables.

“And I’ve had to watch him panting after you for  _months_.” He doesn’t waste time on gentle caresses or lingering kisses, he grabs her thighs and lifts her right up onto the edge of the table, stepping in between her legs to keep her in place. “It’s time for some payback.”

Her eyes are bright with anticipation. He wonders, as he digs his fingers into her hair, if she’s already wet for him. By the time he’s done, she won’t even remember Fitz’s fucking name.

“You kids know I’m still here,” John’s voice cuts through Grant’s barely leashed anticipation, “right?” 

He drops his head forward against Jemma’s shoulder while she struggles not to laugh. It’s up to her to answer him because there is no way Grant’s gonna be able to face him while he’s like this.

She does though - his girl’s got no trouble standing her ground against John - and he leaves with a parting comment about not forgetting the condoms because he’s not ready to be a grandfather yet.

Jemma’s giggles get the best of her as the doors slip shut, leaving Grant the pleasurable job of turning them into moans.

 


	56. everything is fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Framework AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a first sentence prompt from howaboutwedance

“It’s fine,” Ward says. “I’m fine. You’re fine.” He sighs out a breath. “Everything is fine.”

“Right,” Jemma says slowly. She tips her head sideways to look over his shoulder, wondering what Skye makes of the way her boyfriend is holding another woman. It’s not precisely inappropriate - he’s held her similarly before while checking her over for injuries on the rare occasions she’s been forced to enter the field - but it’s been going on quite a while and the circumstances - a simple running into one another in the hall at the office - is hardly worthy of his concern.

 _Nightmare_ , Skye mouths. She adds a vague sort of gesture Jemma imagines might have something to do with falling or heights or … she doesn’t know. Whatever it is, it’s frightened Ward terribly. 

Sympathy erupts in her chest and she can’t help but feel sorry for him. She can’t at all imagine what his work must do to him mentally and, though she’s thankful he and Skye do it, wouldn’t wish that pain on her worst enemy.

“I’m sure you’re both on your way somewhere important,” she says gently, hoping the reminder will entice Ward to release her. It does, but he’s plainly reluctant to do so. She lays a hand on his arm to ease some of his anxiety. “Why don’t the two of you stop by the lab before you go? Assuming you’ll have time? A little pre-mission check-up?”

Ward and Skye exchange a look. A whole conversation is conducted entirely via raised eyebrows and minute twists of the mouth. It’s truly impressive; Jemma wishes she could have that sort of a relationship with someone in the lab, one in which verbal communication is only a minor necessity because the two are so in sync, but it seems to come only from the sort of reliance on one another that field work requires. Pity.

“After,” Skye says, clearly to Ward’s annoyance. “Lunch? Or dinner? Just the three of us.”

The request throws her off. She’s friendly with Ward and Skye of course. They’re easily the operatives she knows best. But they’ve never been  _friends_.

“A- all right,” she hears herself saying before she’s had time to recover her senses.

“Good.” Skye seems pleased. Ward less so. Though what that means, she couldn’t say. “We’ll see you later, W-” She coughs. “Whenever that is. Bye, Simmons.” She exits, practically dragging Ward down the hall with her.

“Hail HYDRA,” Jemma says weakly by way of goodbye, and waves after them.

A sharp glint of something pulls her attention away from the two of them. She examines her lifted hand, studying it. It seemed, for a moment, there was a ring on her third finger. Which is silly; she’s never been one to wear rings at all and certainly not there-

She’s hit suddenly by a strong, visceral memory. Anger - no,  _hatred_  - and the pain of her flat hand striking a cheek, the ring glinting in the sunlight like a knife slashing across her vision. 

“Are you all right?” 

Jemma breathes deep. She’s leaning against the wall and her heart is pounding. “I’m fine,” she says. Grant said she was, didn’t he? And that was him. In the memory. She can see clear as day in her mind’s eye the fury on his face and the pink of his skin where her hand struck him, made worse by the cut the blow opened up on his cheekbone.

“Dr.  _Simmons_. Are you all right?”

For some reason, hearing her name snaps her out of it. The vision - not a memory, she’s never seen Ward so angry or with injuries like those, and she’s  _certainly_  never dared strike him or even had cause to - fades, leaving her free to face Dr. Radcliffe and the comfort she offers.

“Yes,” she says, shifting her weight away from the wall so that she’s standing on her own two feet again. “Yes, Ophelia, I’m fine. Sorry about that.”

Radcliffe smiles conspiratorially. “Maybe a little less caffeine?”

Jemma chuckles. “Yes. That might help.”

“Good.” Radcliffe slips her arm through Jemma’s and pulls her down the hall towards their lab. “And how about tonight we go out? Celebrate the weekend?”

“That sounds lovely, but I’m afraid I might have plans with Agents Skye and Ward.”

Radcliffe scoffs. “‘ _Might_  have plans.’ You know how operatives are. They’ll probably be gone two weeks and forget about you completely.”

“I suppose you’re right…”

“Of course I am. So we’ll go out tonight and you’ll forget about  _them_  instead. Sound good?”

There’s really no saying no to that smile. “Fine,” Jemma chuckles. She settles into her work, intent on enjoying her day and not thinking at all about flighty operatives and their odd mood swings. 

(And if she finds herself fisting her left hand frequently or swearing she can feel the weight of wedding rings beneath her gloves, it’s her imagination. Nothing more.)

 


	57. magical connection / against a wall / hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> empathic AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: magical connection / sex against a wall / hair

The unsteady rhythm of  _pat-pat-patting_  that’s been going for ages now stops, jarring her from her dozing. She draws in a deep breath, her lungs as surprised as the rest of her, and is briefly overcome by a wave of terror at the sight of the cargo bay floor a full fifteen feet beneath her feet.

She’s on the catwalk, she reminds herself sternly. There is solid - well, it’s perforated, but it’s  _firm_  - metal beneath her bum and the safety rail is no less structurally sound now than it was a moment ago when she was sleeping against it. She is  _safe_.

“I’d catch you.” Ward doesn’t even look at her while he unwinds the tape from his fingers. Given the distance between them, she could be wrong, but she thinks it looks rather bloodstained. “If you fell,” he adds. “You don’t have to worry.”

He said much the same thing yesterday while he helped her climb the downed tree trunk. Then, she felt only heartfelt sincerity and a dim hope it would be taken to heart. Now, she feels bitter annoyance and that same anger that’s been like acid in her throat for hours.

“I know,” she says, but the words are mostly lost beneath the sound of his bare fist slamming into the bag. The frustrated noise he makes is barely human.

He catches the bag with shaking hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Ward-”

“I’m  _trying_ ,” he says, looking at some dark corner of the cargo bay instead of up at her. “I’m trying to push it down but …” His fingers curl against the stiff fabric of the bag. Her stomach churns with hatred and guilt and shame that, like the bitterness, isn’t hers.

She grips the railing tight as she climbs to her feet and keeps her eyes fixed on her shoes as she takes the stairs down. She’s learning to live with her newfound phobia just as she’s learning to live with the rather unfortunate condition she and Ward share.

It’s her fault. Her empathy was always so slight - a sometimes there, sometimes not ability that barely impacted her at all until SHIELD scooped her up. Like all cadets, she was tested at the Academy, and while it was determined she had a greater aptitude than most of the population (she could have told them that), it was deemed useless for SHIELD’s purposes. She might one day be able to tell you the complete stranger drinking tea across the street had just broken up with her significant other and the next not even know whether Fitz was angry or simply hungry. 

But then she met Ward, held his chin to steady him while she swabbed his cheek. She wasn’t surprised by the sudden surge of annoyance from him. But  _he_  was. Or, more precisely, he was surprised that he could still feel her buoyant enthusiasm after she released him, when up to that point he had strictly been a touch empath. 

He’s resumed his attack on the defenseless punching bag. Which, unfortunately, she thinks will win by virtue of its thick hide.

This is her fault. Not that he’s in pain -  _that_  she blames entirely on the Asgardian in the Cage - but that he’s so concerned for her when he’s the one in agony. If she had only been more thoughtful; she  _knew_  there were other empaths in SHIELD’s employ and while brainwave synchronization is rare, it does happen. Obviously.

“Ward,” she says.

“I’m trying,” he grunts again before a series of vicious jabs. As he said, he’s pushing down at the rage and hurt the staff has summoned up in him. But that’s useless. Near to him now, all that hate and pain is like a cloud that surrounds him, threatening to choke them both. There’s no trapping fog in a box and he’s only exhausting himself trying.

She touches his arm when he brings it back to protect his face from his imaginary opponent. He stills instantly. Fear flashes like lightning through the cloud. Not of her though,  _for_  her. He’s worried he’ll hurt her.

Little chance of that, she thinks. She has no evidence, but she can’t believe the man who gently talked her up that tree less than thirty-six hours ago could ever willingly do her harm.

“This isn’t working,” he says, helplessness clinging to him like the sweat dripping form every inch of him. His shirt’s gone grey with it and it makes his hair limp and lank. She longs to remove her hand from his arm to wipe her palm, but she has the odd idea he won’t move so long as she’s touching him so she leaves it where it is. “The two of us. We need more distance.”

There’s no cure for synchronization. It’s possible it might wear off - but equally likely it might not - and physical distance could aid in that. The only reason neither of them have been reassigned was Coulson’s decision to overrule protocol for reasons Jemma hasn’t yet been able to ascertain. However, if one of them requested the reassignment, there’s little chance he would force them to remain.

But distance won’t do anything for Ward. Whether or not she can feel his emotions, he’ll still be able to feel his own.

Uncomfortable as the last few hours have been for her, she wouldn’t dream of leaving him alone in this.

On impulse, she grips his arm for balance and goes up on her toes to kiss his cheek. The moment freezes around them. Her breath - or perhaps it’s Ward’s - stills in her lungs, and light like the sun cuts a shaft through the aching cloud around them. It’s the most positive feeling she’s experienced in hours.

Thunder rumbles through the cloud of anger - or through Ward himself, she’s a little too stunned to be sure - and she finds herself backed into the lab’s outer wall. Ward grips her arms tightly. “That was stupid,” he says. “Dangerous.” He sounds furious, but the terror is obvious. It’s a sharp note like the shriek of an untuned violin, hovering in the air.

She’s not paying attention to that though. Or to the pain in her arms or even to the cloud of anger buffeting against her. She’s thinking about the way it broke beneath the tiniest bit of … of what? She has theories as to the exact emotion, but they’ll require further testing to determine precisely what they were. And more important is testing whether or not that effect can be replicated.

“All the most important experiments are,” she says and, before he can think to stop her, moves forward to kiss him again, this time properly. 

There’s a moment of fear - on both their parts - but then her hand slips beneath his shirt and light breaks through again. He pushes her into the wall and his hands dig into her hair, holding her roughly in place while he kisses her back. She melts into him and soon she can’t see, can’t feel a thing except the light. It’s everywhere, bright like a spotlight and warm as the sun.

The cloud evaporates in the face of it.

 


	58. silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Grant takes Skye and Raina off the Bus, he takes Jemma along too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: silence

The quinjet ride is horrendous, as Jemma knew it would be. Skye is with her, which can barely be called good news as it means she too has been captured, but at least there’s a hand for Jemma to hold while she tries desperately not to think of the physics keeping them airborne in a vehicle so much smaller than the Bus.

There is, of course, Ward as well, but even he turns out to be a help. He shushes Raina when she would make one of her usual mocking comments and sits in brooding silence for the rest of the ride. If Jemma weren’t so preoccupied with her own heart-stopping terror, she might wonder over that. The last time Ward dragged her onto a quinjet against her will, he spent the entirety of the flight - all three minutes fourteen seconds of it - talking about the wisdom of turning traitor to SHIELD and helping Garrett achieve his dreams of immortality. But now, he doesn’t say a single word to her or even to Skye.

Once they’re firmly settled on the ground, he barks orders. He hands Raina over to two agents with an admonition to watch her and orders another two to escort Skye to her father.

“No,” Skye says to that. Her fingers are still laced with Jemma’s and she appears to have no intention of releasing that hold even though her hand must be aching from how hard Jemma surely gripped it while they were in the air. “I’m not going anywhere without Simmons.”

Ward steps forward. He towers over them, his expression a blank mask. “I made you a promise,” he says, voice on the edge of kind, “and I’m gonna keep it. But Simmons has got a date of her own.”

Skye’s hands tighten.

Ward’s mouth thins in annoyance and his eyes… Jemma saw that look earlier too, when he swept the lounge with a glance and his gaze settled for a moment on her. Then, it seemed to mean nothing as it was followed immediately by a mocking threat to the team and the demand that they hand over Raina, then Skye, and finally Jemma herself.

He grabs Skye, forcing her from her seat and all but throwing her at the waiting guards. “Get her out of here,” he snaps. He watches while Skye is dragged from the plane. She struggles, throws insults and promises that she’ll find Jemma, but it’s all for naught. In the end, it’s just Jemma and Ward.

He faces her again once Skye’s yelling can no longer be heard. Jemma calmly releases the straps holding her to her jump seat and stands. There’s no point in refusing to come when Ward could just as easily toss her over his shoulder and carry her along. This way at least she’ll have a chance of seeing a way out of this mess.

Ward takes her arm and leads her down the ramp. He isn’t rough with her, but he isn’t gentle either. 

The sun is far brighter than the quinjet’s interior lights. It reflects off the ocean below and the pale building - the fort, she assumes - they’ve landed beside. She recovers in time to see Ward waving off a pair of hovering men and to see their relieved expressions.

“You’re taking me to Whitehall,” Jemma says as they enter a broad archway into the fort. She tries to count men and weapons - so many she begins to worry about the others already present in the city - to mark the locations of structures she might use for cover on her way back out.

He makes a sound she thinks might be a laugh, but she can’t be sure. This is not the Ward she knew. This man is harder, crueler. She doesn’t know what makes him laugh anymore, not the way she thought she did last year.

“Your intel’s a little out-dated,” he says. “There’ve been a few shake-ups since you up and quit.”

That’s one way to describe her leaving HYDRA’s employ. “Oh?” she asks. They pass inside, out of the sunlight. The halls are narrow but no less crowded than the courtyard they left behind. Ward pulls her closer.

“Whitehall’s not in charge anymore.”

Well that’s certainly worrisome. Much of the plan to reach the city before HYDRA revolves around Whitehall’s ego, if he’s not calling the shots-

A second, more immediate worry hits Jemma right between the eyes. She assumed Ward brought her along because Whitehall wants to exact his revenge on her for her time undercover. If he’s not in charge, why would Ward single her out the way he did?

“And the penny drops,” he mutters.

“Why am I here?” she asks. “If you’re not taking me to Whitehall, then why bring me along at all?”

“You should be thanking me,” he says, shifting his grip a little higher on her arm. “You might’ve missed it because you were busy closing your eyes and thinking of England, but the other quinjets disobeyed my orders. The second we were clear, they opened fire. The others had a hell of a fall.”

Jemma’s stomach drops out, grief and fear of what she very nearly was present for mingling in a cocktail that threatens to make her physically ill. It’s all she can do to follow where Ward leads and keep her feet beneath her.

He turns her into a much less heavily occupied hall. There are signs of recent activity - crates and supplies and footprints in the dust - but only one or two people, and those eager to hurry away. They’re halfway down it before he speaks again.

“My ICER’s on your side,” he says, voice softer and gentler than she’s heard it since his attempts at feigning remorse in Vault D. He tugs her arm so that her wrist brushes the weapon. “Second door from the end on the left, take it about thirty feet and you’ll find some caution tape blocking a set of stairs. Take them up and you’ll come out where part of the fort’s falling off the cliff. You stay close enough to the building, watch your step, and you should be able to make it into the city.”

She stares, unable to do anything else. Ward is- Is he  _helping her escape_?

He’s kept facing ahead the whole time he talked, but now he catches her staring. His jaw tightens and his eyes take on that inscrutable quality again. “The boss wants you. I don’t know why.” Now, coupled with that tremor in his voice, she knows what that look means: he’s afraid. For her.

Whoever this new head of HYDRA is, whatever they might want with her, it’s enough to frighten a man who left her for dead in the not so distant past.

She should stay. She should face this new head and gather whatever intel she can to pass along to Coulson. She should refuse to make her escape without Skye by her side. She should go along solely because Ward wants her not to.

But she spent months running when he told her to run and hiding when he told her to hide. It was his job to protect her and while she knows she can’t trust it, part of her is afraid because he is afraid.

He faces forward again, his expression closing off. “Make it look good.” His mouth barely moves and she realizes he must be taking a terrible risk helping her like this.

They’re nearing the doorway he indicated. It’s now or never.

He jerks her closer, a rough motion that would appear to anyone watching as a warning not to move too far from his side. Her wrist brushes the ICER again. She twists her hand and closes her fingers around it.

 


	59. 1x10 AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant confronts Jemma

Jemma’s mind is still buzzing from the mission and the debrief. It bounces from the revelation that Centipede is behind Amador’s eye implant to Mike’s enhanced healing to sympathy for the men enslaved by this heartless enemy. She’s so caught up in it all that she’s paying no attention at all to her surroundings as she moves into the back of the lab to begin the autopsy on Mr. Hayward. As a result, she completely misses the very large figure looming in one of the corners until he moves. Even then, she catches only a glimpse of him before he has her pressed up against the wall.

“What the hell was that?” Grant’s voice is low, just this side of the tenor he uses while interrogating very bad men in the Cage. He’s never used such a, frankly, threatening tone on her before. She’s surprised to discover it doesn’t entirely frighten her.

“What?” she asks through the haze of unexpected desire and her own lingering thoughts regarding the mission. Even when the worst of that fades into the background, she’s caught up in the familiar strength of his hands around her arms and the very presence of him so close. He had the forethought to push her behind the towering crates which hold the supplies Fitz needed to craft Mike’s suit. Here, no one can see them from the cargo bay.

They’ve never done this. Not on the Bus. Not in the  _lab_. What is he thinking?

“What was what?” she asks, remembering his initial question.

“You,” he says, still in that dangerous tone. “Mike.”

She presses her back against the wall, trying to find some space between them, but he only crowds her further. She’s beginning to have trouble breathing. And not altogether in a bad way. “I don’t- I don’t know what you mean.”

His hands tighten until she’s sure to have bruises. “You were  _flirting_.” He makes it sound like she was leaking classified documents to the enemy. And, more to the point, she was  _not_.

“I admit,” she says as she tries and fails to find a posture which doesn’t result in his knee pressing between her thigh, “I might have been a little … overenthusiastic in my appreciation of his physiology-”

Grant chuckles darkly. The sound reverberates through her in a wholly delightful way.

She bites her lip, trying to get a hold of her libido. This is hardly the time or place; there is a  _dead body_  little more than an arm’s length away.

That in mind, she moves her eyes from Grant’s face to Hayward’s corpse, hoping that will cool her desire.

“But I don’t see why it matters,” she continues. It’s working. She’d still very much like him to press his knee a little higher, but that pulse of want is no longer quite so strong in her veins. She can think again. “I did nothing inappropriate and-” she dares to meet his eyes- “there’s no reason I shouldn’t look. Is there?”

It’s not a challenge. Simple curiosity lies behind the question. She and Grant are casual. They sleep together in flagrant violation of the frat regs, he lies about it where appropriate, she keeps her mouth shut. That’s all. There’s nothing more.

Is there?

It’s  _not_  a challenge, but she thinks Grant might take it as one. He flinches as if she’s struck him and a moment later his hands are falling away and he’s stepping back. The imposing attitude from before is completely gone, replaced by his usual awkwardness.

“I’m sorry,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “You’re right. I- I’m still keyed up from the op, that’s all.”

She steps forward. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

He backs away before she can touch him. “No. No, I’m fine. I just-” He looks to Hayward’s body; she wonders if he too is using it as a means to remind himself why they can’t do this here. “I’m not … we’re not …”

“It’s all right,” she says when he seems incapable of finishing the sentence. “I can be more … discreet, if that would make you feel better.” She’s certainly made enough of a fool of herself over Mike already, and it wouldn’t be a hardship if it would set Grant’s mind at ease.

“No. No, do whatever you want. It’s none of my business.”

The last of her desire is washed away by an equally unexpected wave of hurt. She doesn’t know why. It’s none of Grant’s business who she’s attracted to anymore than it’s her business who he is.

And yet, the sudden ache in her heart is curiously sharp.

She steps back, putting a little more space between them. “All right then,” she says in her best attempt at a professional tone. “If there’s nothing else?”

He stares at her, wearing an expression she can’t make sense of at all. She feels curiously naked under it, and not in a good way.

“No,” he says, his voice rough. “No. Nothing else.”

He walks away, through the lab and the cargo bay, up the stairs, leaving her alone with a corpse. She feels like that should mean something, but she doesn’t dare analyze what.

 


	60. devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant doesn't come to Providence alone

Jemma works. She keeps her hands so busy with rebuilding experiments destroyed during the battle for the Hub that the tremors she feels in every beat of her heart can’t reach them and her mind so occupied there’s no room in it to notice what’s going on around her. She doesn’t see Skye’s accusatory stare or hear Fitz’s yelling or see when May’s head strikes a cabinet while she’s being dragged out, the same way she doesn’t drop three test tubes.

She works until her spine refuses to unbend and she quite literally can’t see straight. Until the base that had once been lonely and empty feels crowded and cramped with men. Until Ward comes for her.

He slips an arm around her back and tugs her into his side. She falls against him without protest, well aware through her haze of exhaustion that the men who’ve come in recent hours are staring with a perverse sort of appreciation. She curls more deeply into Ward.

They don’t return to the Bus, which she considers a small mercy. If she had to walk past the lab where she worked with Fitz and Skye or the lounge where they grew into a family, she might finally break. Instead, he steers them into one of Providence’s many quarters.

Once there, her exhaustion flees. Relief - that they’re not going back on board, that she’s away from the lab, that he’s here with her - has woken her up and she begins tugging at his clothes and hers.

He catches her face between his hands. They’re so warm they seem to burn. Or perhaps she’s the one who’s cold. 

“You sure you’re up for this?” he asks while his thumbs sweep over her cheeks.

She surges up to kiss him in answer.

Later, while he sleeps beneath her and she listens to the familiar rhythm of his heart, she stares into the darkness and wonders which is worse: the person who betrays SHIELD while it stands strong or the one who betrays it when it’s broken and struggling to survive?

 


	61. levitate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urban fantasy AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: levitate from safelycapricious

“You nearly  _died_ ,” Daisy says.

Jemma hums into her tea. It’s been a week since she was caught in that necromancer’s circle and nearly lost her life. As she’s still very much alive, thank you, she doesn’t know why Daisy insists on making a fuss over the news.

“Like,  _died_ ,” she repeats. “D-I-E-D. How are you not freaking out?”

“I did,” Jemma admits. There was a great deal of crying when all was said and done, more than she’s willing to admit to in fact, but that was when shock and adrenaline were rubbing her emotions raw.

Daisy reaches across the small table to cover Jemma’s hand with hers. It’s a sweet gesture, but wholly unnecessary.

“I had a little help,” Jemma says as said help places a plate of cookies on the edge of the table. 

Daisy’s eyes follow him as he leaves them to their girl talk. “Uh huh,” she says heavily. “Magical help?” she asks once Grant’s out of sight. “Or sex help?”

Jemma hums into her drink again.

“Jemma!” Daisy sounds scandalized, as if she didn’t bring it up herself.

“He saved my life.” Not that she feels she  _owes_  him sex, but there’s no denying he was of great help in that regard. If Grant hadn’t stepped into that circle after her, she’d be dead now. Or undead. And as neither are enticing options, she does appreciate his interference. In an effort to steer the conversation away from the unfortunate particulars of those events, she says lightly, “And he’s also quite helpful with countering the aftereffects of my brush with death.”

One of Daisy’s eyebrows rises. “What kind of aftereffects?” 

Jemma instantly regrets her teasing as she’s reminded that both of Daisy’s parents have dabbled in death magics. No wonder she’s so concerned.

“Nothing harmful,” Jemma soothes. “I just … I have a little more power lately than I’m used to. Not enough to make any real difference in my casting but …”

“But what?”

Jemma glances at the toaster. Its shining surface isn’t a particularly good mirror, but it’s enough she can make out Grant’s blurry reflection working out in the garage. No chance he’ll hear. “Did you happen to notice the bruise on Grant’s cheek?”

She doesn’t know how Daisy could have missed it, it’s reached that ugly green stage and reminds her of the time Fitz’s potion measurements were off and he started molding all over.

“I kind of fell on him.”

“From  _where_?”

“About six feet above the bed,” Jemma says in as light a tone as she can manage.

Daisy makes several noises, very few of which might be words but all of which are plainly questions.

Jemma sighs. “The excess energy tends to manifest itself while I sleep. I kind of-” she waves a hand through the air- “float.”

Daisy sputters as laughter overtakes her confusion. And no wonder:  _babies_  float. When they still have too little control to manage even their own limbs, their magic is downright impossible and they tend to lift off while they sleep. But an adult floating? It’s truly ridiculous.

“It’s not that bad,” Jemma says.

And Daisy seems to believe her because the laughter subsides quickly. “Really? Even though you’re bruising your hero boyfriend?”

Jemma smiles mischievously. “It was only the first night, since then we’ve figured out a workaround.”

Daisy’s brow arches again. Jemma throws another glance at the toaster, just to be safe.

“Let’s just say the risk of bodily harm is a fantastic way to convince a man to cuddle.” She hasn’t slept out of Grant’s arms since that first night. Nightmares aside, this week has been some of the best sleep of her life.

 


	62. 1x14 TAHITI AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma takes a few minutes to herself to get cleaned up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: TAHITI AU from shineyma

It’s a good thing they’re parked at a medical facility because Ward may have just given her a heart attack.

“Ward!” she gasps, clutching her towel to her chest while she leans against the doorjamb. Steam billows against her back, making the hall seem that much cooler after her shower.

“Sorry.” He scrambles to his feet (or perhaps “scrambles” is the wrong term, far too inelegant for the practiced way Ward stands from his place against the wall by the door) and looks politely in another direction.

It’s not like him to  _sit_  anywhere. He spent much of the last few hours on his feet, lurking in corners or pacing. Once he even disappeared for ten minutes and came back slightly winded; she’s certain he took a run around the complex just to burn off his nervous energy. That he’s been sitting in such an odd location strikes her as worrisome.

She never even asked if he was hurt during the raid on Quinn’s compound. Could he be suffering from an internal injury or slow-acting poison? He needs to be checked out; if there’s something wrong-

“Simmons.” His hand catches hers, holding it aside to stop her from reaching for his shirt. His other hand hovers between them, not so close as to be inappropriate, but obviously ready to catch her towel should she drop it.

She snatches her hand back and steps away. “Sorry.”

He chuckles. It’s not the rough, unpracticed sound she’s grown so fond of over the last few months. This is something sad and hollow. “We should maybe say other words.”

“Right. Are you hurt?”

His mouth curves in a disapproving frown. “I’m fine.”

“Then why were you on the floor?” 

He sighs out a breath and glances up and down the hall. “There are strangers on the plane.”

“Agents,” she corrects. “Downstairs.” And Ian Quinn, who’s still licking his wounds in the Cage, but Jemma would rather not think about him. If she does, she might also begin to think about the various toxins sitting in the lab, practically waiting for someone to take them out and use them on a cowardly murderer.

“May and Fitz are supervising the install,” he says, meaning the installation of the med pod they’ll use to transport Skye. “Coulson’s throwing his weight around, making sure no one tries to stop us taking her.” He shrugs as though the rest of his explanation goes without saying.

It doesn’t.

“And?” she prompts.

“You were alone.” He sounds so angry, she almost misses the fear. “Vulnerable.”

He was protecting her. Parked in a secure SHIELD facility, Ward felt the need to protect her. The reason why - that there is nothing he can possibly do for Skye right now and that he no doubt feels responsible for the injuries she suffered while he was elsewhere - is heartbreaking, but the fact that he did it at all is still terribly sweet. If-  _when_  Skye wakes up, Jemma will have to tell her. 

Or not. She thinks of the long minutes she spent sobbing in the shower. If Ward’s been here the entire time…

She puts her hand on his arm to steady herself while she kisses his cheek. “Thank you,” she says before slipping into her bunk to change.

(She isn’t at all surprised, upon emerging several minutes later, to find him leaning against the wall across from her door.)

 


	63. post-s4 AU (Jemma/Framework!Grant)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're imprisoned, but at least they're together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sapphireglyphs requested a fic where Jemma helps Framework!Grant adjust to being a real boy

“You’re doing it again,” Grant (she prefers to think of him as Grant, a separate entity from the Ward they knew) says. In her confusion - she doesn’t know what he’s talking about and they weren’t speaking to one another before - she freezes, and discovers the cause for his comment. The heel of her hand is pressed just to the left of her sternum, to the precise spot AIDA jammed a wrench into her LMD.

She frowns at the spot. “Do I do it quite often?” Often enough he’s noticed and thought to comment.

He shrugs one shoulder. In doing so, his entire body seems to curl forward around the book he’s reading like it’s a shield. Speaking of things that have been noticed, he does  _that_  quite often. She doesn’t know whether the others have realized - with the exception of Daisy, they all seem to ignore him for the most part - but he’s obviously uncomfortable whenever he finds himself under any sort of scrutiny.

She releases him from the pressure of her attention, turning again to the crude drawings Coulson’s left in the floor. If she hadn’t spent months studying those which led them to the alien city, she would assume these were the same and, with any luck, their jailers do as well. In truth, they’re diagrams of the compound they’ve found themselves imprisoned in.

It’s a very  _nice_  prison. Jemma and Fitz have lab space. May and Daisy have a gym. Mack has a garage. And then there’s the communal area, which she and Grant are currently sharing. It’s all very pleasant. 

And, seemingly, inescapable. Despite his frequent summons to meet with Agent Pole outside the extensive quarters the team’s been given, Coulson has yet to find them a means of escape.

Grant lowers himself to the ground beside her, sitting so that he is somewhat facing her but she can still see the diagrams. His book -  _A Tale of Two Cities_  now; when last she looked, he was reading  _Macbeth_  - he holds in one hand, his fingers between the pages to keep his place while it rests on his legs. She didn’t notice him standing or crossing the room, but oddly she’s not frightened. 

Ward used to do that. He would sneak up on her on the Bus. Then, she thought it endearing, that he didn’t realize what he was doing until he’d startled her. Now, she thinks it was purposeful and likely more than a little malicious.

But she’s not surprised at all by Grant’s movements. She’s not sure what that means.

He reaches out, pulls the low collar of her shirt aside to better see the spot. This too is different. If Ward had done this, depending on when and under what circumstances, she either would have blushed to her toes or tried to break his hand. But Grant’s touch is careful, not at all lingering, practically clinical. It speaks of nothing so much as friendly concern and she doesn’t mind it at all. “Did it hurt?” he asks.

“No,” she says immediately. The LMD they used to fool AIDA was never formatted; Jemma had to remotely control it herself using a hastily doctored pair of the first generation VR goggles that ultimately became the Framework. It wasn’t nearly as immersive as that world was though. She was aware of May gripping her hand in the burned out medical lab, just as she was of AIDA spitting hateful words at her ear.

Grant holds her gaze steadily. He isn’t fooled by the answer she gave to Fitz when he haltingly asked whether the buffers he installed had worked.

She touches the spot again, this time with her fingertips. Her skin is whole, the muscles and organs beneath as healthy as they ever were. “Do I really do it that often?”

“The doc- Fitz hasn’t noticed.”

Her eyes slip shut. That’s a small mercy. Things with Fitz are … strained is a positive spin on it, she thinks. She can see when he looks at her that he still remembers that moment when he held the gun to her head, and on top of that he’s still struggling under the guilt of the other things he did in the Framework, all the lives he remembers taking, the people he hurt. He can barely stand to be in the same room as Daisy.

And that’s just him. There’s a reason she’s here in the common room rather than working in the lab. In an absurd sense, she’s actually grateful to their jailers. It was them that put her and Daisy in the same quarters while they were still unconscious, saving Jemma the awkwardness of openly choosing to room with someone other than Fitz while they’re imprisoned here.

All of a sudden, she’s broken out of her thoughts by Grant’s laughter. Or perhaps laughter is too much to call it, it’s certainly a chuckle though.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just- if you’d told me a month ago that out of a group of eight people - me included -  _Melinda May_  would have one of the most stable relationships, I would’ve sent you to the psych level for an eval.”

It’s probably horrible of her, but she smiles a bit at that. HYDRA’s psych evaluations tend to result in rather invasive cures for whatever ails their agents, but the joke of sending one’s coworkers in for one is apparently the norm in both reality’s HYDRAs. 

“If it helps, Daisy likes you much more than she did our Ward. He was …” She frowns, trying to find a delicate way to rephrase Daisy’s old favorite descriptor of  _the psycho in the basement_.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean- I’m not waiting on her. She’s not my Skye and I’m not the kind of guy who’s just gonna replace the woman he loved with a lookalike.”

Jemma pulls a face, wondering if anyone’s told him about Agent 33 yet. As she doesn’t intend on being the one, she asks, “How are you doing? With everything? You left your world, your life, only to find yourself imprisoned.” And he did it for them - for Daisy, she thinks, but it was more than Ward would have done - when Elena told him about the danger they were in once they escaped the Framework. 

He holds up a hand to show fire dancing along his fingertips. “And with a whole bunch of superpowers thanks to Madame Hydra’s body building machine? It’s an adjustment, yeah, but I’m alive. Which is more than I can say for literally anyone I met before you guys showed up so…” He shrugs again, but this time he doesn’t curl in on himself. He seems more comfortable in his own skin talking here with her on the floor than he has since they defeated AIDA. “All in all, it’s not so bad.”

“It would be better if you could use those powers to get us out of here.” Whoever these people are, they know how to dampen not only his teleportation, but his other powers. In the fight against AIDA, he was able to create an inferno that very nearly put the Ghost Rider to shame, but here the tiny flame at his fingertips seems to be the best he can do.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “even if I could do more, it’s been made pretty clear to me that the guys upstairs know my weaknesses.”

“When your powers are functioning properly, you don’t  _have_  weaknesses,” she reminds him. At least not many, unless these people have an extra-dimensional, so-called demon guarding the premises.

She looks eagerly to the diagrams again, this time looking for places he might be able to make openings where there aren’t currently any. She’ll have to discuss this with Coulson - delicately, of course, she wouldn’t want their captors realizing what she’s thinking - but if he can mark a few places the walls are thinner or where there might be a gas line or two, they might be able to make a real go of it.

This time, Grant does startle her. His knuckles brush her cheek, pulling her attention to him, and she’s suddenly aware that the weight of his gaze has been on her this whole time. There’s nothing clinical about this touch. He moves her hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing the curling strands before he lets go. “Yeah,” he says softly, “I do.”

He stands, leaving her alone with her plans and her thoughts and the tingling in her cheek.

 


	64. brood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x18 AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: brood from thestarfishdancer

The building is coming down. There’s a hysterical commentary running in the back of Jemma’s mind, reminding her that the lights that flicker aren’t real, the floor that’s gone wobbly like a carpet is an artifice, even the pain in her knee when she stumbles is false information being fed directly into her brain. None of that changes the danger however, or the fact that Mace is-

She can’t think about him. If she does, she’s not sure she’ll make it out.

She’s not sure she’ll make it out anyway.

“May!” she calls when May breaks off from the group.

“I came in this way,” May says. “It was still stable.”

“We’ll go our own way,” Ward says, making the decision for the rest of them. 

Given the life or death nature of the moment, Jemma would much rather follow the  _actual living person_  - or at the very least not let May leave now she’s found her - but Coulson pulls her after Ward. It seems her confession that he killed the real Ward has done nothing to temper this Coulson’s faith in the man.

“Is she one of us?” Coulson whispers urgently as they duck into a stairwell. Ward and Trip are already on the stairs below them, hurriedly clearing doorways and leading the boy they rescued to safety. “I saw her and it was like- I knew her name.”

“Yes,” Jemma says, gripping the railing while her feet take her swiftly downward. “In the real world May is your-” The rest of her sentence is swallowed up by a scream as the railing she’s holding snaps out of place. For a moment she keeps her grip and is carried out over the open stairwell, then her hand slips on the metal and she’s falling, nothing but empty air around and the ground below, wind rushing past her and certain death rising up to catch her.

Hands dig painfully into her arm and shoulder. Her body slams into a more stable railing and she scrambles to get her feet on the stairs it’s anchored to.

“I got you,” Ward says, holding her tight while he helps her over. “I got you, don’t worry.” 

There’s no time to collapse when the building’s about to do the same right on top of them. He drags her out with him, holding tight to her hand until they’re back on solid ground with the building well behind them.

And then she remembers Mace. That while that building that’s sinking in on itself might not be real, Mace is. Was.

Coulson helps her through the gap in the chain link fence, his comforting touch familiar. She walks blindly onto the bus, only noticing Trip because her heart still hasn’t gotten over his being here at all yet. There’s an empty seat near the front, but she passes it by, fearful Trip will take it with her and she’ll have to face a ghost after just losing yet another good agent. She falls into a seat that’s already half-occupied and stares at the seatback in front of her without seeing it while they move out.

Mace is gone. Died for nothing at all except his own honor. And he might think that worthwhile enough but she’s supposed to be saving  _him_. She’s tired of losing people.

Tears slip down her cheeks as images of the collapsing building mix with her fall and the terror she ignored bubbles back up. Her breathing starts to grow erratic. She’s in danger of hyperventilating and she struggles to find something else to focus on, but all her mind offers up are other failures, other falls.

A hand closes over hers. It startles her enough to stave off a break-down for a few more seconds, long enough for another hand to cup her cheek, forcing her to face Ward. She chose the seat next to him without realizing, she really must be in a terrible state.

But she has to answer his obvious concern somehow so she struggles to speak while her lungs fight just as hard to breathe. “I- I have trouble wi- with hei-”

That’s enough. He straightens them both, settling her against his side and holding her close. “I got you,” he says, voice tight with his own grief. Even her hatred of the real Ward isn’t enough to have her shrugging off comfort right now; she leans against his shoulder, half-burying her face in his jacket. He sighs heavily, no doubt thinking about what things will be like back at base when they return without the figurehead of the resistance. “I’ll be right here to catch you when you fall, okay?”

She startles at the familiar words, but turns it into a nod of agreement. She still can’t force her thoughts from what did happen and what nearly happened for long, but with a solid chest to lean against and an old promise echoing in her ears, she’s no longer in danger of being consumed by it.

 


	65. expectations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant and Daisy go into the Framework to rescue the others

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: expectations

“Grant?” Simmons sounds worried. She should be - it takes a lot to stop him in his tracks like this - but her worry might attract unwanted attention so he forces himself to focus just well enough to pull her against him, make this look like a tender moment before they head on in.

A better world. A world without regrets. That’s the Framework’s tagline, so Grant had a lot of ideas about what he might find when he first opened his eyes on the other side: a Coulson who never died on the helicarrier, a May who never went through Bahrain, a Fitz who had the balls to tell Simmons he loved her when it actually would’ve made a difference.

And maybe all that is in here somewhere, but so is freaking  _HYDRA_. Out in the open. So open there’s a skull and tentacles on the side of the still-standing Triskelion. What the  _fuck_?

Simmons’ hands slide over his shoulders, brushing the bare skin above his collar. “Grant?” she says again. “Are you all right?” She puts the backs of her fingers to his forehead and then his cheek. “Are you feeling well?”

The look on her face isn’t just concerned, it’s caring - hell, maybe even loving. He pulls her a little closer while his stomach roils. 

It’s nice being cared about. In the year and a half since he was dragged back into the Playground, things between him and the team have barely thawed. They put up with him, accept his help because they can’t find good reasons not to, and even sometimes there’s camaraderie there, but they still don’t like him. And Simmons? She  _hates_  him. Tried to kill him once too. And now here she is, gazing at him with what he can only call adoration.

He feels sick.

He and Simmons might not be friends, but she hasn’t been what he’d consider a mark in years and now the only smart move is to play her like one. So he smiles and brushes her hair from her face, says some meaningless romantic nonsense to keep her from getting suspicious, and all the while feels like goddamn Lorelei. 

“No,” she says, snapping him out of his thoughts with the succinct syllable and her pert little frown. He does  _not_  think about the playful sparkle in her eyes, just like earlier when she found him watching her get dressed.

“No?” He backtracks, mentally going over what he said to cover; he didn’t think he asked a question.

She tips her head. “I know when you’re trying to butter me up, Grant. What’s this really about?”

He could tell her. Right now. He was hoping to have a little back-up from Daisy when he did it, but here’s his opportunity. Tell her the truth, get her to remember the real world, convince her that her loving boyfriend is a lie and the real Grant Ward once dropped her to the bottom of the ocean and later mocked her about it.

Yeah, that’ll go over well.

Best case scenario, considering the glittering towers dominating the horizon, is she lovingly hands him over to be reeducated. So no, the truth is definitely out.

But he’s gotta say something to explain his behavior and he knows every second closer to when she finally does snap out of it is one less he has the chance to ask what’s eating at him. So he asks it.

“Why are you with me?”

She’s surprised by the question and maybe a little too by how raw it comes out. Not that he needs the others to like him or anything but … he wouldn’t hate it if they did, just a little. And here she is, sharing his bed and his apartment, cuddling up to him in public like it’s nothing. He’s gotta know why, what makes this him different.

She straightens under his hands and brings up her own to cup his face. “I am with you,” she says seriously, each word carefully formed and firm, like she wants him to remember this, “because I love you.”

He tries to shake his head but she’s holding him too tight. “But why-”

“Because you are not only the things you do,” she continues sternly. “I know that last mission was rough. I know it was difficult for you. But you are more than the things you do in the field. You are a mind that chooses how to act - and I know you chose what was right, I  _know_.” The emphasis is for him, not for her. Whatever’s happened here, whatever they are in this world, she knows him well enough to guess at his motivations for acts she wasn’t even witness to. Her hands slide down over his chest. “And you are a heart that cares enough to hurt over its own actions rather than blindly justify them after the fact.”

He struggles not to sway beneath the force of her words. She said almost those exact ones to him as an insult last year. He wonders how she’ll feel about that when she remembers.

“You, Grant Ward, are many things - not all of them good, I admit - but you will always, no matter what, be loved.” She taps his chest, sealing the words into his heart. “So be hurt, get angry, do whatever you need to do today to shake off Berlin. Just remember that you’ll never be able to shake  _me_  off, all right?”

A bone-deep ache pulses through him. It’s the sort of want John used to tell him was a weakness. But god, does he want it, this. This place and this woman and this love. He wants, for just a minute, to be able to hold it tight and never let it go.

But then he pushes it aside. John was right, it is a weakness, one that’ll get the whole team, Simmons included, killed and trapped in this place to rot until the circuit boards wear down. Not exactly a love story for the ages.

“All right,” he says, summoning up that same smile he’s used on a hundred different marks. He pulls her into his side and heads for the Triskelion. “Does that mean you’ll meet me for lunch?”

“I might not be able to. The doctor wants my latest research into a possible vaccine.”

He makes a mental note to find out what the vaccine’s for, just in case whatever disease she’s fighting will get in the way of their escaping this place, and finds a bit of bare skin above the waist of her jeans to pinch. “You know a girl who really loved me would find a way to make it to lunch,” he says with a forlorn sigh.

She smacks his chest lightly. “You are terrible.”

“So you’ll be there?” he presses.

“I’ll make it work, but I might have to stay late tonight to make up for it.”

That’s fine. He has no intention of either of them returning from their lunch date. The morning should be more than enough time to use HYDRA’s computers to track down the others, and after that, if all goes well, they should be able to escape this place by nightfall.

He tries not to think about the disappointed hollow that certainty leaves in his chest.

 


	66. 67%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The countdown is taking ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 67% from streetlightsky

“Sixty-seven percent,” Jemma says. It’s simple maths. Easy to focus on in the midst of the heart-pounding terror that threatens to overwhelm her if she dares think about the test results she’s waiting on. (Two more minutes. She could die before then.)

“What?” Ward asks. He’s looking a little poleaxed himself. She probably should have waited until after her suspicions were confirmed (or, in the case of a negative, simply gone out, gotten herself drunk in relief, and never told him at all) but he walked in while she was waiting and he asked her and it’s not as though she could have  _lied_. He’s a world-class specialist and she hasn’t told a convincing lie since- well,  _ever._

“The contraception SHIELD prescribes? Its success rate drops to sixty-seven percent when used between agents due to the way the male and female versions protect against conception.” She waves a hand while watching the timer on her tablet tick down. “They tend to cancel one another out. For instance, the compound you take-”

“I don’t need to hear the science,” he says.

She nods tightly. She imagined as much but she was hoping to distract herself while she waits.

A slight pressure at her waist urges her to sit on the stool she’s been hovering beside all this time. Ward is staring intently at her. “You okay?” he asks.

“We’ll know in-” she glances at the tablet- “one and a half minutes.” Lord, how is there still so much  _time_?

He raises an eyebrow. “Does that mean you won’t be okay if…?”

“No!” she exclaims. “I mean … I don’t know. Would you?”

He eases back, resting a hip against the counter and throwing a glance of his own at the countdown. “I don’t … maybe.” His shoulders roll back. “Kids aren’t really encouraged at Ops.”

Not at SciTech either. There was never anything outright said against it, but there was definitely an emphasis put on career over family. Nothing wrong with that from one’s employer, but with the particular brand of work they do, there are more practical reasons for it than simply protecting productivity.

As a specialist, Ward will have made enemies over the course of his career, possibly all over the globe.  _Jemma_  has made enemies and she’s only been in the field a few months.

“But,” he says. 

After her realization, she latches onto the meager word and the hope it contains. “But?” she prompts when he pauses.

He sighs. “Can’t say I’ve thought about it a whole lot. My family wasn’t all that great. But…”

She bites her tongue to keep herself from snapping at him to  _spit it out_. Her anxiety is mounting as the timer ticks down and she wants desperately for Ward to magically say just the right thing so that either outcome might be acceptable. But her childhood was nothing like his own. She had doting parents and no siblings to share their love with. She has an idea the fears Ward might have regarding his abilities as a parent, but she’ll never understand them on more than an academic level.

He taps the edge of the counter. “I’ve made it my mission in life to be better than my parents thought I was, better than they were. I hope I’d be a good dad.” He meets her eyes and the depth of the emotions in his eyes steals her breath. “And I wouldn’t mind doing it with you.”

There’s almost a question in the words and she thinks she recognizes those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes from the field. He’s afraid. That she’ll reject this, reject  _him_.

She slips off the stool and steps into his space, resting her hands over his broad chest. His heart beats a steady, if slightly elevated, rhythm. (She wonders distantly whether it’s due to the _if_  hanging in the air or her own sudden proximity.) It helps calm her. 

Or maybe it’s that she can’t see the timer ticking away anymore.

Just like the night all this started, they feel right. His hands fit perfectly around her hips and his body feels like it was made for hers. Just big enough, just tall enough, just firm enough. 

But it isn’t enough. Not to start a life and a family together. Especially when they’d be starting things backwards: family first and then, ideally, love and affection later.

But then she thinks about the months they’ve spent together on the team. He’s softened and warmed up to all of them. He’s no longer the robot Skye still likes to call him. And he hasn’t changed entirely either; he’s still brave and heroic and determined.

He has his bad qualities too of course but…

“I-”

The timer beeps. Her hands seize, curling in the surprisingly soft fabric of his shirt, and so do his at her hips. She closes her eyes, willing herself to hold still. The answer she’s been waiting so desperately for is  _right there_  but she has to say this before she knows or it won’t mean anything.

“I think,” she says slowly, willing her heart to slow even while his pounds beneath her fingers, “that I wouldn’t mind doing it with you either.” She opens her eyes to attempt a friendly smile. “There are worse options out there, after all. I mean, can you imagine if you hadn’t been there? I might have wandered into base and ended up with-” she shakes her head, cycling through the agents they know stationed in the Cube- “Agent Sitwell.”

Ward barks out a laugh that seems to surprise him as much as it does her. He struggles to lock his reaction down even while massaging her hip. 

The timer beeps again. 

“Ready?” he asks.

Jemma leans a little more deeply into his warmth, lets it fill her up, give her strength. She nods. “Ye-” The rest comes out muffled by his mouth on hers.

It’s sudden, wholly unexpected - they haven’t kissed since that night and the lab is the last place she’d ever consider doing it at all (there are chemicals and experiments and that mess Fitz hasn’t cleaned up in a week, not to mention the floor-to-ceiling windows and the multiple entrances, all allowing any of the others to discover them) - but it’s also very welcome. For the first time since the thought of pregnancy occurred to her, her pulse thrums in her veins due to something other than worry. 

She presses against him. If they fit so perfectly, it couldn’t be so bad getting something from that, could it? A little, physical proof of how right they are together?

She’s more aware suddenly of that spot, just above where his hips are pressing into hers, where a life might even now be growing. 

As if he’s read her mind - or perhaps she only gave some sign of her more serious thoughts - he breaks the kiss. The timer dings yet again, as she’s certain it did several times while they were preoccupied. 

She meets his eyes and finds them darkened by passion.

“Sorry,” he says roughly. His tongue passes over his lips. “I just wanted to do that one last time before…”

She nods. She understands. She’s glad he did.

She eases back so that she’s supporting her own weight rather than leaning against him and reaches blindly for the tablet. 

There’s fear and anticipation in his eyes, but she thinks there might be hope too. She thinks of that spot inside her, the one that might hold nothing or might hold her - their - future.

She thinks it wouldn’t be so bad at all.

 


	67. this is the life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant and Jemma are prisoners. It isn't so bad.

“This is the life,” Grant sighs. The ache in his shoulder is long gone thanks to the warm compress that nurse gave him - assuming she was a nurse, she definitely wasn’t dressed like one - and this couch is the softest thing he’s so much as seen in weeks. He’ll be able to sleep like a baby while they’re here.

Naturally, Simmons has to ruin it.

“You’re not serious,” she says, and even though his eyes are closed he just knows she’s standing there with her hands on her hips like some overbearing mother hen. “We are  _prisoners_.”

He shifts so his ribs are a little more comfortable. They still haven’t fully healed from that op last month and the fight today didn’t do them any favors. “Nicest prison I’ve ever been in.”

One of the pillows beneath his feet is pulled away. His whole body feels the impact of his heels on the arm of the couch and his eyes snap open.

“There can be no good reason these people are-” she throws an arm around the opulently decorated suite of rooms- “are lavishing us with expensive foods and amenities. They must want something from us.”

“They do.” To Grant’s right, on the floor, is an intricate mosaic all in blacks and whites and reds. From where Simmons is standing it looks like a ram’s head. He’s pretty sure it’s not though.

These people are HYDRA, not that he plans on telling Simmons so since it’d probably get him a three hour lecture on why this is all his fault. He’s guessing, from the lack of out-and-out tentacles he’s seen here and in the rest of this base, that these are what Garrett used to call the inbred third-cousins of the HYDRA family. They’re less into the science and more into the occult, think they can resurrect some ancient god to help them cleanse the world or whatever.

They make people like Daniel Whitehall look downright sane.

Simmons kicks the couch, which jars her worse than it does him. “Well? What do they want?”

Grant’s Mandarin isn’t great, but his Russian is solid and in the mix of the two being thrown around out there he caught enough to piece together what their captors might want with them. Then there was that big old stone they passed by, the one shaped disturbingly like an altar, and now all this food…

They’re fattening up the lambs for sacrifice.

“Our help,” he says brightly. “They want your brain and my- well,  _me_  to help them in whatever their crazy take-over-the-world plan is.” He uses a finger to circle all the nice toys they’ve been given. “This? Is all in hopes of buying us off.”

She sits next to his legs and a second later her shoulders relax as it hits her how damn soft this couch is. He tries not to smile too obviously. “So they want us alive, that’ll buy us time.” His urge to smile disappears.

“Exactly.” He turns away from her, trying to find a comfortable position again. “Now if you don’t mind - by which I mean I don’t care if you mind, I’m doing it anyway - I’m gonna take a nap before I plot our escape. You go take a bath or something, see if they gave us one of those tubs with the jets.”

He waits until he feels her stand up and wander off - which takes way longer than it should, she must really be freaked to stay so close to him after the way she was talking on the flight out here - to order his brain to shut off. HYDRA means these people know exactly what he’s capable of. If he’s gonna get the two of them out of this alive, he’ll need his rest.

 


	68. nuzzling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Framework AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: nuzzling from shineyma

Warmth wraps around Jemma. Warm light, warm sheets, warm arms and legs. She hums as rough stubble scrapes along the sensitive skin of her neck and a kiss is pressed behind her ear.

“Will,” she sighs.

The arm around her middle tightens. “Will I what, baby?”

Surprise washes over her, cold and sharp like fear, but that’s silly. She rolls onto her back to frown up at Grant.

“What?” he asks, concern wrinkling his brow.

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Just-” Her frown deepens as she tries to focus her thoughts through the cobwebs of sleep still clinging to her mind. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“You seemed fine to me.” He touches her forehead, her cheek, searching for physical signs of distress. Her dangerous assassin is terribly sweet when he wants to be.

“I had a nightmare, I think.” She remembers a voice telling her to be more careful while she struggled to escape it, a sharp pain in her leg, a room filled with bodies- “You were there,” she says, reaching for his face. Maybe that’s why it was so frightful. Grant’s was one of the still bodies she was carried past.

He tips his cheek into her hand. “Did I help?”

No. She was terrified at the sight of him, so pale and lifeless. “Always,” she says on a smile.

He grins boyishly, proud to be of service, and dips down to kiss her quick before climbing out of bed. She sits up after him, foregoing her shower in favor of watching his morning warm-up. It’s no great loss, seeing him hearty and hale and alive helps clear away the last of the cobwebs, and she can always share when it’s time for his shower besides.

 


	69. cerulean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post-s4 speculation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: cerulean from safelycapricious

She shouldn’t have done that. The orb buzzes faintly against her fingertips and what once appeared to be clear glass is turning a sky blue and she can’t let go. This can _not_  be good. She really should have known better than to touch anything she found in this level of the ship (or really anything on the ship,  _period_ , it being an alien spaceship and all) but it seemed so harmless in its little cushioned box and, with the color deepening the way it is, it is very pretty; she can’t tear her eyes away anymore than she can drop the orb from her hand. Not that she particularly wants to.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” a voice asks behind her. It’s lightly accented, smooth and very near seductive. She doesn’t turn to see who it is, not even when long fingers close around her shoulders. 

It takes a moment for the question to penetrate her thoughts, they’re so focused on the orb and the way it softens the stark electrical lights reflecting off it. So pretty…

But she  _does_  realize there is a question and, after another moment of effort, manages a faint, “Yes.”

The man’s chin rests against her hair. “It’s a toy,” he says. “It will give you what you want.”

That sounds nice. 

He hums. “Though not necessarily what you want to want. That’s the game.” His lips lower to her ear. “Would you like to play?”

With the orb? Yes. Most definitely. So long as she can keep on holding it-

“Good,” he says, in a tone so darkly satisfied it penetrates even her thoughts. But it’s too late. He lets go and she feels like she’s falling, straight through the floor, with only the blue light to hold onto. It wraps around her, fills her up until she’s not sure where it begins and she-

 

* * *

 

Jemma blinks against the sunlight. It’s another beautiful summer day, though perhaps a bit  _too_  early to be opening the curtains quite so far. She focuses lower, on the billboard across the way. Its shadows are easier on her eyes than the cloudless sky.

“There’s a new alert,” she calls as information on an escaped Inhuman scrolls beneath a photo. The description is mild, reassuring even, but she has enough experience to read through it; that is a very dangerous man.

She half-turns at the sound of footsteps and sees Grant waving his phone. “Already got it. You’re coming in with me today.”

She pulls a face. Going  _in_  with him isn’t so bad - it’s nice to chat with him on the way into work - but this is likely to be a long day for him, what with hunting down the escaped madman, and she’d rather not wait around the lobby for hours because her specialist husband is too paranoid to let her drive her own car into the office.

“I hardly think he’s going to be looking for me,” she says. She doesn’t even recognize the photo and if he isn’t looking for revenge because he happened to be one of her test subjects, then there’s really no point in inconveniencing anyone over it.

Grant finishes pouring his coffee but doesn’t return the decanter, instead he sets it on the counter and takes up his phone again. “He doesn’t have to be looking for you to hurt you. You’re coming with me or you’re on lockdown all day. What’ll it be?” His finger hovers over what she presumes to be the call button. If she opts for lockdown, he’ll call in a favor with Lorenzo in security to have the apartment watched.

She rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to the street so as to better hide her smile. It’s overbearing and rude, but it’s also terribly sweet the extent to which he cares. “I have experiments that need tending,” she says, putting more annoyance than she feels into the words. 

Outside, the city is waking up. A few people notice the alert and pick up the pace, eager to be safely at their destinations. One or two pause to give it real notice, committing the face to memory so that they can help in the manhunt in their own, small way. Their dedication to their civic duty fills her with a warm pride.

Broad hands wrap around her hips and stubble scrapes against the sensitive skin behind her ear. She flinches, overwhelmed by a sudden, visceral horror, sure she’s about to hear a mocking voice.

“You know I only worry about you, right, baby?”

Of course it’s only Grant. She relaxes into his strong chest, allowing his warmth to seep through her skin. 

“I know,” she sighs.

 

* * *

 

The orb finally slips from her hand, making a soft  _tink_  against the metal floor. She doesn’t stir when her arm is lifted onto the narrow cot and is not expected to. Her skin is pale, only a few shades warmer than death, and she’ll remain that way.

A chipper humming echoes over her as the orb is caught up, tossed into the air, and snatched out of it. It glows a deep cerulean. Such a sad, heartbroken soul. She’ll be better off in the labyrinth of her own dreams.

The orb and the soul it now contains are returned to the box and locked away. The one and only key is hidden on a chain beneath a fine, silk shirt. It falls against its owner’s icy chest at the same moment a bang sounds from above. 

One of the others is coming nearer. From the sound of it, he thinks it might be the quick one, the one named after a child’s toy.

He grins. Time for another game.

 


	70. yearning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wasn't exactly hiding her plans, she just didn't want him finding out

“What is this?” There’s a lack of emotion in the question, almost no inflection at all, that’s the first sign of trouble.

“What is what?” Jemma asks, already knowing precisely what Grant’s discovered on her dresser. She knew she should have hidden it behind her unmentionables.

He flashes the application at her, stalling her mid-stretch. 

“Right,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t sound as guilty to his ears as it does to hers. “That. I should think it’s rather obvious.”

He sets the application for transfer down innocently enough, but there’s a weight to the motion that feels like he’s just dropped a live grenade in the middle of her quarters. He sits on the edge of her bed, somewhat sideways so that his feet are still firmly on the ground but he’s facing her.

“Field work? Seriously?”

To stop her guilty (and why should she even be guilty at all? It’s not as though she’s done anything wrong. Agents request transfers all the time) squirming, she sits up and wraps her arms around her knees. “I joined SHIELD for the opportunities it presented-”

“You can work in any lab on the planet,” he reminds her softly.

“Yes, it’s quite the honor.” She looks around the room for something else to focus on and finds only the print of the London skyline tacked on the wall. There are no windows, only the single door. “I’ve been based on three continents since graduating the Academy and all I can say of any of them is that the standard SHIELD labs are the same no matter how far from the Equator you are.”

Grant gives no sign of his feelings on her little speech, not until she’s finished. He takes her hand, running his calloused thumb over her knuckles the way he likes to do while she sleeps. “You know, it’s not all that different when you’re in the field. You’re there to work, not to sight-see.”

“I know.” She’s not a child, she knows it’s a job and an important one at that. “But I just …” She sighs. “I’m a very excellent biochemist, as everyone is always keen on telling me, but I would like to  _see_  some of the good I’m doing in the world, not just hear about it through largely redacted field reports years down the line.”

He meets her eyes, an odd sort of tic pulling at one corner of his mouth. She thinks it might be a good sign. “There’s no talking you out of this, is there?”

She shakes her head. She intends on going into the field if she has to drag Fitz kicking and screaming the whole way.

He drops her hand in favor of slapping his knees as he stands. “All right then, we’d better get going.”

“Going?” she echoes dumbly, watching while he begins gathering his clothes from her floor. Along the way he pauses to pull at her dresser drawers, tugging a soft t-shirt and sweat pants from them to toss at her.

“The gym fills up fast in the mornings, even at the Cube. If you wanna start a training regimen, we’ll have to go early to beat the crowds.”

“Training? You mean-”

He pulls his shirt down and fixes her with a stern look. “Field certification isn’t easy. It’ll take hard work, a lot of it when I’m not around to push you.”

If he means to frighten her back to the lab, he fails utterly. She breaks into a grin. “You’re going to train me.”

“I’m going to train you,” he echoes, sounding as though he already regrets it. 

She half-crawls, half-jumps over the bed and into his arms. “I always knew I made the right choice picking you up that night. And Fitz told me I was crazy to be flirting with an operative.”

His hands curl around her hips at the same moment his lips curl in a smirk. “I let you  _think_  you picked me up.” He pushes her away. “Now hurry up. I wasn’t kidding about it being crowded and I’ve gotta get my workout in too.”

She hastily dresses, not wanting him to rescind his offer. With Grant’s help, she’ll make it into the field by the end of the year. She can’t wait.

 


	71. tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a dream

She tries to close her eyes, but that only makes the wind worse and she feels certain the walls around her have disappeared, leaving her exposed to the elements and the view and the distance between her and the ground, so she opens them again.

The walls haven’t disappeared. But the window is still wide open, affording her a breathtaking view of the distant mountains. She must be  _very_  high.

A shout reaches her on the howling wind. Someone is outside. She’ll have to go to the window to see them. And then she’ll have to look down.

She feels ill.

But she moves forward, as though simply thinking she must is enough to get her going. And then she really does feel ill because the ground is so far below and the window is so high and- and she- oh-

“Rapunzel!”

Shock snaps her thoughts into focus. Below her, her soulmate laughs. Her soulmate. She’s in a dream. With her soulmate. Which means she isn’t really so high up, she’s only dreaming she is. Her body is perfectly safe on board the Bus. (And she doesn’t think beyond that because the Bus has a habit of flying and she’s trying not to consider that.)

She can’t see him clearly, not with him so far below and not ever because these dreams are most unhelpful in that regard, but she sees that he presses a hand to the stone wall of the tower.

“Let down your hair!” he urges.

As soon as he says it, she realizes how heavy her hair is. There are coils and coils of it all over the floor.

“Bugger,” she mutters and begins gathering it up to throw it down to him. This is what she gets for letting Skye lighten her mood with Disney films.

It isn’t romantic. It doesn’t hurt, precisely, because this is a dream, but she’s aware of how uncomfortable it is all the while. He makes up for it though, by kissing everywhere on her scalp once he’s helped her hoist the tangled locks back inside. She’s giggling helplessly by the time he’s done and is afraid she lands them both in the nest of her hair on the floor. It feels good, laughing again. There was a while there when she thought she would never…

“What?” he asks, seeing - or perhaps feeling, she often wonders if she’s aware of his emotions here because their link allows her to feel some echo of his - her suddenly solemn expression.

She can’t answer. Can’t tell him that her work almost lost him her forever. Can’t explain to him her brand new phobia which has resulted in this absurd dream. So she kisses him instead. Properly. Not on the cheek the way she has before.

She thought it would only distract him, she didn’t think it would be … this. There’s none of the awkwardness and far more intimacy than a simple kiss normally comes with. If she thinks she might feel his emotions when they’re simply speaking, she can definitely feel them now. His passion burns through her as if it were her own and she knows, without question, that he loves her and longs to find her as much as she does him.

It’s a cool relief even as she feels sure she’s burning up with him. It’s been weeks since they crossed paths, resulting in their meeting in their dreams, and she’s been unable to narrow down who he might be from among the many people she encountered that day. Mike Peterson, who she touched multiple times while administering medical care, was her first thought, but he’s mentioned nothing about finding his soulmate during his therapy sessions. And none of the agents she patched up in the wake of the incident at the train station have put in notice of experiencing shared dreams. She’s worried that perhaps that meant…

But he wants her. He wants to find her. He must be a civilian then, someone she brushed past while rushing through the crowds that day.

“Stop, stop,” he says, pushing her back, ending the kiss.

She drops, spent, onto the cushion of her hair. “That was amazing,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It was.”

She waits, sure he’s about to ask what’s happened to prompt this dream, but after long moments he only moves forward. He lays alongside her, wrapping her in his strong arms - she wonders if he’s as strong in real life as he feels here - and holding her close. He asks no questions, says nothing at all for the rest of the night. Somehow, without knowing anything about the traumas she saw today, he manages to give her precisely the comfort she needs.

This, she thinks while she rests her head on his chest, is why everyone has always made such a fuss over soulmates.

 


	72. my boyfriend wants us to break up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> real!Framework AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a first sentence prompt

“My boyfriend wants me to break up with you.”

In the mirror, Grant’s body goes preternaturally still atop the rumpled sheets. It’s a beautiful thing - all those carefully toned muscles, taut and ready to spring - enough to soften the annoyance that prompted her to speak in the first place. She tosses him his phone, newly released from the wireless-dampening case she insisted on keeping it in while they were otherwise occupied.

Grant catches it out of the air without the least trouble, but doesn’t even glance at it. “Your … boyfriend,” he says after a beat.

Just to make him sweat, she finishes doing up the buttons of her blouse before answering. “Fitz.”

“I didn’t know you two were-”

His confusion is adorable. “We’re not,” she says firmly. She and Fitz haven’t been an item in years. “But that doesn’t stop him being jealous.”

She doesn’t think he wants her back - no more than he ever does since he and Ophelia became official - but it’s a point of pride with him at this point. She followed him into Hydra, allowed her love for him to supersede her youthful morals. 

She knows now how shocking that was, that she was the last person any of the analysts expected to turn willingly. Fitz is still quite proud of what he considers to be his own accomplishment there. And he isn’t pleased that now the loyalty and affection she once felt for him, those feelings he believes have kept her operating without argument beneath Hydra’s tentacled umbrella - as if she would have been one of those idiots leaving Hydra’s security for the tattered remains of SHIELD over a break-up - might be transferring to someone else. 

Grant, ever on the watch for threats, can’t let this one pass now he’s been made aware of it. “So he knows about us.”

“No. Or, not exactly.” He knows she’s involved with someone. 

“It was kind of hard to miss it,” Fitz said to her last week, “what with the way you’ve been behaving.”

“And how have I been behaving?” she asked archly, sensing a row on the horizon.

“Like some infatuated schoolgirl, parading around this place always smiling and humming, practically skipping down the halls. You keep this up and people will start to talk.”

Which means that Ophelia has noticed and brought it to his attention. Jemma thinks she might be a bit jealous of her and Fitz’s continuing friendship, as she always seems to be at the center of attempts to upend it. It would be just like her to throw it in Fitz’s face that Jemma’s finally found someone new.

She comes around the bed to sit by Grant’s side. He hasn’t made the least effort to get dressed - likely he plans to shower before leaving so as to stagger their exits and subsequent arrivals back at the office - and she does enjoy the slight thrill of power it gives her over him. It’s all psychological, not the least real, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. 

She drags her nails along his temple, into his hair. “He doesn’t know it’s you.”

“Ah.” There’s a world of meaning in the single syllable. “Is that why you locked these up?” He flashes his phone at her. “You really think he’s gonna track you?”

“He might.” The truth is she doesn’t know what Fitz will do. The entire reason she and Grant sneak around as they do is due to her own fears that they can’t be anything more. In the year after she and Fitz broke up, she tried putting herself out there, but by that time he was growing quite well-known for his ruthless tactics. As his reputation grew, her options dwindled. Fewer men would even flirt with her, some would outright flee if she attempted to flirt with them. Eventually, she gave up.

Until Grant.

She leans in to kiss him quick before returning to the dresser and her toiletry case. Her hair is nothing but tangles.

“Maybe I should check that my go-bag is stocked before heading into the office,” he says while tapping away at his phone. Despite his threat, she’s sure he’s checking in with May to see if she has a new mission for him.

“Oh, is my paid assassin afraid of an engineer?”

His eyes meet hers in the mirror and something in them stills the brush in her hair. His Adam’s apple bobs and, without looking, he presses another button on his phone before tossing it away. “When that engineer is the doctor? Hell yeah, I’m afraid.” He reaches over the side of the bed, grabbing a handful of his clothes - jeans and his shoulder holster; however did those end up in the same place? - from the floor. “Do you have any idea how much work it’d be to cross him off? I’d have to kill him, I’d have to kill the Madame, and before all that I’d have to make sure at least half - or the more capable third - of their private guards were loyal to me. And then I’d have to take over. You know how much paperwork goes into running an operation like Hydra?” He shakes his head and pulls on his jeans, all while completely unaware of the stunned silence around him.

Jemma drops her brush to the dresser and moves to intercept him. She presses a hand over his heart, uses it to push him back down onto the bed. He holds it to his chest, frowning at her. Likely he’s worried by her serious expression.

“You’ve thought about this,” she says.

“Well-”

She cuts him off. “No. You’ve thought about this.”

His thumb sweeps over her fingers. His other hand pulls at the back of her thigh. “I’m dating the ex of one of the most dangerous men in the world. There are things you gotta consider.”

“Dating?” No one ever said anything about dating. They have sex. And sometimes make the most of the room by spending the night. And perhaps from time to time they talk and he holds her and they’re the best moments of her days, but that doesn’t mean…

“I think it stops being a booty-call when you pass the two-year mark, babe.”

Her throat goes tight, which is just as well; if she could speak she’d do something inane like ask that he’s been counting, when he quite obviously just said he has been.

She answers that confession the only way she can, with a kiss. This isn’t the quick peck she gave him earlier, this consumes them both, the hectic, potentially damning feelings behind it threatening to drown them. She stops it when it becomes clear her options are either that or getting dressed all over again. 

“Sorry, love, I really do have experiments to get back to.”

His hand remains curled around the base of her skull, doing more damage to her hair; she’ll definitely have to fix it again. “Oh, I don’t think so. There are way more important things than science.”

She scoffs and tries to climb off him, but he holds her fast and gravity does the rest of the work for him. They’ve somehow, over the course of their very heated make-out, ended up horizontal again. Bother.

“Such as?” she demands.

His wicked smile falls, turning to something terrible and heartfelt. “An apology.”

Her libido is still humming but now her senses are on alert, instinct telling her there’s something wrong. The hot and cold meet in the middle, making it difficult to tell up from down, a sensation which only grows more pronounced when she feels the cold barrel of an ICER against her temple.

“I’m sorry, baby. It’s not personal.”

 


	73. over the phone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s2 soulmates AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: things you said over the phone from aos-biospec

The other end of the line picks up after one and a half rings. “Hey, baby. You need something?”

Jemma winces. The endearment may warm her, but it only gives greater power to the others listening in. She dares a glance at the face of the man holding her phone out; the lines around his mouth have deepened. Behind him, the short man’s cloudy expression has grown downright thunderous and the man beside him has taken to resting a restraining hand on his shoulder. It’s all evidence of what she already gathered: these people know Grant and they don’t like him at all.

The last of the men, the frightening one standing behind Jemma, gives her shoulders a nudge. There’s a script, one she’s meant to be keeping to. She is to ask Grant where he is and encourage him to return home as quickly as possible so that these men can … can do something terrible, no doubt.

They may have been almost kind with her - aside from taking her captive in her own home, they haven’t openly threatened or harmed her - but she thinks it might be worse this way. Promises of injury, she could handle, but there’s an ambiguous cloud hanging over these proceedings, something dark and sinister these men understand that she does not. For all it’s a familiar feeling, Jemma’s fought hard to rid herself of it - she can now can go entire days without feeling lost and fetterless as though she lacks some key quality, the absence of which prevents her from truly being part of the world around her - and she doesn’t like being made to feel that way again.

“Jem?” Grant asks, worry coloring his tone. She can practically see the way his forehead must be wrinkling, the frown that pulls at his lips. She glances to the door. Outside, in the hall, she can just see a pair of limp paws and a tail sprawled on the hardwood floor. These men  _shot her dog_. What more will they do to her soulmate if they get their hands on him?

“I’m here,” she says. “I was thinking.”

“Something bothering you?” His tone is lightened by relief. He’s used to this kind of behavior from her and never judges her for the troubles she sometimes has pulling herself out of her thoughts or for the odd questions that spring from those same thoughts.

“Who is Coulson?” she asks. The man holding the phone doesn’t strike her as the sort to startle easily, so she takes the slight relaxing of his carefully blank expression as a win. She’s surprised him.

If she expected this deviation from the script to earn her a real threat, she’s disappointed. Far from angered, Coulson appears pleased.

“You know him,” Grant says, his voice going soft and muffled like he’s moving into narrow spaces to ensure no one overhears. Something heavy slams, but Grant makes no sound of distress. “He’s the director of SHIELD.”

She meets Coulson’s eyes squarely, searching her memory for more. The director of SHIELD is dangerous; he managed to pull the organization out of the ashes HYDRA rose from, make it a real threat again. He’s also the agent largely responsible for bringing the Avengers together, his death-

His death. He  _died_. 

The GH-325. 

The Centipede project. 

The lab. 

The Bus.

Jemma drags in a breath that stings in lungs that feel too small.

They don’t feel like memories, more like distant facts read in a book she’d forgotten about. But they do fill in some of her blank spaces, making her feel slightly more like a flesh and blood person.

“He was on the team,” she says. Coulson smiles. The gentleness of it is so much like the way he spoke to her and touched her, guiding her to this chair when she was terrified of him and his people. She thinks she understands now why he didn’t threaten her.

“Yeah,” Grant chuckles. “He was our CO.” The faint sound of a car engine revving comes over the line. He’s on his way home.

As it often does when she comes out of one of her aimless episodes, fear grips Jemma’s heart. She knows enough of Grant’s history with the team to know that there’s plenty of bad blood between them. She thinks, given the way he talks about them, that Grant might be willing to look past it if not for her. Whitehall is dead, Bakshi imprisoned, much of HYDRA on the run after that disaster in San Juan, and Grant needs someone to hate for what was done to her. The man who sent her undercover and the team that failed to rescue her are as good a focus for his anger as any.

And then of course there’s the hatred these people hold for Grant. He’s made no secret of what he did - choosing John over them - and after handing him over to his brother for execution, they can’t be too pleased he’s still alive. How many times did Grant evade SHIELD in the weeks after his escape? And now they’ve found him, and in her they have all the leverage they need to keep him from fighting back.

“Anything else pressing or can it wait?” he asks. “I’m almost home.”

“No,” Jemma says as around her the faces of her captors light up in anticipation. “But I forgot to tell you we’re out of bread.”

Those eager faces freeze in confusion. This is even further from the script than asking about Coulson.

“I thought we had enough to last the weekend.”

She makes a noise of disagreement in her throat. “King got into it. Apparently he’s a fan of potato bread.”

“Jeez,” Grant mutters. “Okay. I’d better go now before the after school rush. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she says, and is impressed by how little like a goodbye it sounds.

The line goes dead. Coulson lowers the phone to his lap. His expression asks his question for him.

“I’m not going to let you hurt Grant,” she says. “Whatever revenge you have planned for him, it can’t be worth half of what my willing compliance would be. I’ll come with you. I’ll work for SHIELD. I understand I’m quite the valuable scientist.”

Slowly while she speaks, Coulson’s mouth turns up in a pained smile. “As much as I would love to bring you home, Simmons,” he says, “I’m here because I need his help.” Between them, her phone lights up as he repeats the call.

“Don’t tell me he drank all the milk too,” Grant says in lieu of a greeting.

“No,” Coulson says, “I’m afraid King is taking a dendrotoxin nap in the hall. You should probably come home.”

Jemma’s heart sinks. While instructions and threats are exchanged, she considers yelling out for Grant to stay away but knows that will only bring him home faster. She can only sit in silence and hope that together she and Grant will be able to figure a way out of this.

 


	74. on top of the world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant's got his orders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: things you said when we were on top of the world from aos-biospec

“Are you hiding?”

“No,” Grant says immediately. It’s not like he’s crouched under the table or anything. “I’m just-” He’s just what? Standing in storage pod C like an idiot instead of hanging out with Trip upstairs or congratulating Skye on her new status or rubbing shoulders with the level eights?

Simmons grabs an empty box from one of the lower shelves and when she comes up, there’s a private little smile pulling at her lips. She moves along the shelves, filling her box with smaller boxes to replenish the lab’s supplies. Gloves, cotton balls, gauze, everything she needs plenty of for a mission to go after the Clairvoyant.

“It’s a lot of people in our little Bus,” she says while she rearranges the boxes of tongue depressors. “Makes things claustrophobic.”

“You think I’m in a five by eight storage pod because I’m claustrophobic?”

“Of course not. I’m sure there’s a perfectly valid tactical reason you’re in here.” She pauses while reaching for the pre-packaged field med kits on the top shelf to throw him a real smile. “Did you shoot Agent Hand?”

A laugh sputters out of him. The truth is he  _is_  here for tactical reasons, not that he’s about to let her know that. 

He grabs a kit for her, moving into her space while he does. “So you’re the one hiding. Good to know,” he teases, but his voice is all wrong. It’s not the light, easy tone that’s become second-nature during their conversations the last few weeks. This is lower, more intimate.

Or it sounds that way. He can’t really class the tone he’s used on every mark he’s slept with in the past decade as “intimate.” This is probably the least intimate he’s ever been with her.

She leaves her box on a low shelf and twists in the tight corner he’s got her in. “Maybe I am,” she admits. “But I don’t think I can be blamed for trying to avoid the man I shot.”

“With an ICER.” And fuck, he’s lost it, gone back to his friendly tone. 

He digs deep, remembers his training, tries to get it back.

Contact. Physical contact is a good way to get the both of them in the mood. Her hair’s perfect, not a strand out of place; she probably spent all morning getting it just right for the brass. He pretends, dragging his fingers over her ear. 

He feels a stirring of something in his gut. It doesn’t feel like lust.

“It was kinda hot,” he says softly. 

There’s a blush rising in her cheeks, but no fire in her eyes, only concern. “Ward,” she says. He likes her tone even less than he liked his.

This isn’t working. It’s that bitch’s fault. She messed him up and now Simmons can’t look at him without seeing a kicked puppy. Months of work winning her over, twisting her around his finger, and it’s all gone to shit.

She’s got this look on her face like he’s  _damaged_  or something. He hates it.

So he kisses her.

He’ll take it slow at first, a few chaste kisses, a few promises whispered in her ear, a nip along her jaw. He’ll have her shirt open before she realizes she’s said yes, is begging him to fuck her on the table crowded into the middle of the pod. And once he’s done that, he’ll have her. She’ll be his. And that’ll make her John’s.

Those are his orders: seduce Simmons, bring her over to work on the drug John recovered from the Guest House. They weren’t as explicit as all that, couldn’t be since they were given barely an hour ago outside the lab, but Grant knows John well enough to understand his meaning. And if John wants Simmons, he’ll get Simmons. Whatever it takes to save his life.

Only Grant isn’t whispering any promises or unbuttoning her top. He’s standing here, lips pressed to hers like some pimply teenager who never thought he’d get this far.

She takes pity on him, presses herself back against the hard metal shelves to make some room between them. Her hand is gentle on his chest, more comforting than restraining.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s fine,” she says immediately. “Or it isn’t  _fine_  but it’s understandable. And it’s not as though it wasn’t good - or it wouldn’t be - it’s only- Oh, bollocks.”

He smiles as much at the uncharacteristic curse as at the babbling. She’s still got a crush on him, that’s something at least. Only thing is, after three weeks of being his friend - sitting up late in case he gets in the mood to talk, letting him talk in circles around what’s really bothering him, quietly and discreetly doing all the necessary medical checks when no one else would be around to see and never once mentioning them to the others - she cares too damn much to take advantage of him. 

He turns away, feeling that claustrophobia she teased him about setting in. Why couldn’t John have tapped her for the Centipede project earlier? Then Grant would’ve been seducing her this whole time and it wouldn’t matter what any Asgardians did to him because she’d already be theirs. Now it’s all wrong.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. She should be running, putting as much distance between them as she can, not looking after his mental health. “Is it- I mean, are you afraid you’re having trouble performing?”

He falls against the shelves so hard the metal shakes and a few of her carefully organized boxes tip over. “No,” he says even though the truth is he hasn’t tried since they left Vegas. For all he knows he’s been supernaturally castrated by that slut. “There’s just a lot happening. Everything’s spinning out of control and now John…”

“What about him?”

“I worry about him is all,” he says, the words coming easily where the other play wouldn’t come at all. It’s not what John wanted, but it’s better than nothing. “He’s getting up there, showing his age more than he used to. He’s taken a few unlucky hits.” He nods to himself, drifting off into memories, waiting for Simmons’ concern to bring her a step closer. Then he drives the hammer home. “Reckless as he is, one of these days he’s gonna need his own miracle drug. It’s a shame we couldn’t get more.”

She looks stricken, but that doesn’t burn half so much as the mental image of her writhing under him.

He pushes off from the shelves, moves past the table so he doesn’t have to look at it. “I’m sorry again,” he says.

“Don’t mention it,” she says, still a little lost in her thoughts. “I mean that. Don’t you dare tell Skye about this.”

He lets himself laugh because that way she’ll know they’re okay, no hard feelings. 

Once he’s outside in the dark corridor, his expression falls. He’s not okay, not at all. Simmons is a mark, has been since day one. So why the hell can’t he play her anymore?

 


	75. genesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant doesn't know why he's here anymore

Smoke trails up into the air from charred walls and still-smoldering floors. It’s thick in Grant’s nose, but it doesn’t distort his view any worse than the dirt and dust clinging to the window.

SHIELD’s here. They’re crawling all over the burned out lab across the street, investigating the latest in a string of arson cases stretching from Florida all the way to DC.

All the major players are here: Coulson and May and FitzSimmons and even some of those newbies Coulson thinks can replace Grant.

But no Skye.

Grant doesn’t know why he’s here, looking for her. She shot him. She’s done with him. They’re over.

Not that they ever were anything.

He thinks about the last year, the way he let her twist him up, and he feels like an idiot.

So why the hell is he out here, luring SHIELD into the open?

Because he  _is_  an idiot.

He runs a hand over his face. His fingers smell like smoke and ash.

He needs to get out of here. Right now SHIELD’s preoccupied digging through the rubble, but if they start fanning out, searching the surrounding buildings for clues… He’s not ready for them to know what happened in San Juan.

It’s when he steps away from the window that it happens. The way the shadows fall beneath the still-standing posts and the crud on the window breaks, he can see Simmons framed perfectly. She’s picking her way through broken glass, on the other side of the lot from where the others are, blocked from their view by a half-standing wall. Behind her in the ashes is a trail of green, bright and vibrant like a neon sign against the blackened ground.

Grant stops breathing. It’s like when that blue gas filled his lungs. His whole body felt heavy and stiff, but inside every cell of his body was alive, poised on the edge of … something.

Outside, Simmons has noticed the flowers—it’s not just green anymore, there are little bursts of color popping up—and she doesn’t seem surprised or curious the way he saw her so many times on the Bus. If he had to guess from her body language, she seems frustrated, maybe even annoyed. She’s seen this before.

He thinks about that narrow room, the stone walls, the gas filling every inch of it. Skye was there with Grant. Raina too. And Simmons.

Grant feels himself smile. Maybe it isn’t Skye he’s been waiting for.

 


	76. 3x02 Purpose in the Machine AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma isn't in the Playground. (A no-monolith AU.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 3x02 AU from shineyma

The sound of a door opening wakes Jemma. It can’t be too serious—anything above a level 3 alert would result in a mass text to all high-ranking agents—it’s probably just Daisy up early and bored with waiting for someone to talk to.

Coarse blankets scrape against Jemma’s exposed skin when she rolls over and she has to balance carefully or risk falling off the hard edge of the mattress. This isn’t her bed.

She scrambles to sit up, catching glimpses of her surroundings as she does—monochromatic walls which haven’t been cleaned in some time; narrow windows near the ceiling, too small to get through even if she could reach them; a sink and mirror attached to one wall; and a single door, currently open so that none other than Grant Ward can lounge against it’s frame.

“Morning, sleepy head,” he says in that self-satisfied way of his. The taunt sends a shiver through her that has nothing to do with her—she realizes belatedly—lack of substantial clothing.

She was undercover as some social climbing hanger-on, meant to be sniffing out whether Werner was planning on following in his father’s footsteps or content, as he seemed to be, to waste the family’s fortune on women and drugs. The assignment required less clothes than she’s used to, bikinis for the most part.

She’s distinctly aware of her bare skin and of Ward, standing only a few feet away, his dark eyes studying her. It’s a show of weakness, but she can’t help wrapping her arms around herself.

“Here.” The room is so small he reaches her in two steps. She angles away while he leans over the narrow cot to set down the cloth bundle she didn’t realize he was carrying. Jeans, she sees, and a sweater. “It can get drafty in this old place, you’ll wanna cover up.”

As thanks doesn’t seem appropriate—and it’s not as though her throat would be able to produce sound with him so close anyway—she says nothing.

He smiles wryly. “What? Cat got your tongue? You had plenty to say to me in the Arctic.”

She remembers. She tried to kill him. It was so easy then. Her hate and anger were like a fire eating her up, driving him to hurt him the way he’d hurt her friends.

It’s gone now. Whenever Ward comes up in conversation—as he so often does with Hunter on the warpath—she reaches for that familiar fire, hoping to hate him the way she used to. Only the fire’s gone, the only sign it was ever there the emptiness she feels in its absence. And it’s been getting worse; she finds herself thinking of Ward, longing for  _something_  to fill her up, at times when there’s no cause at all to think of him.

It’s why she took this assignment. Better to be out in the field, drowning herself in the mask of someone else, than drowning in her own emptiness.

His smile is gone. He’s not exactly  _pouting_ , but he’s plainly unhappy with her silence.

He sits on the edge of the cot, the clothes between them. “Is this about Morse?”

The reminder of the torture he inflicted on her friend doesn’t bring on a wave of fear; it’s  _guilt_  that washes through her. Shouldn’t she be able to drum up some anger towards the man who nearly killed Bobbi?

She tries. She turns her focus inward, hunting for the hate that seemed to carry her for the better part of a year.

His fingers brush her temple. He’s moving her hair over her ear in a terribly familiar gesture. Likely it’s meant to frighten her, and it does, in a way. She feels those long-dead embers inside her flare to life, stoked by his proximity. Only it isn’t hatred that catches her breath in her throat and sets every inch of skin he touched to tingling.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he promises, his voice low and intimate. Her throat feels dry. “I would never do anything to hurt you, Jemma. I just need to keep you here for a little while, until May comes looking for you. All right?”

She may have spent the last week making Werner think she was some gold digging floozy, but there is no possible way Jemma’s become a fair enough actress to speak now without letting Ward know precisely how she wishes he wouldn’t hurt her.

He pats her knee before standing and it’s a miracle she doesn’t whine at the contact.

“I’ll be back later,” he says while grabbing the door handle—the  _only_  door handle, as her side doesn’t have one at all. She wonders dimly if he knows the simple statement sounds like a threat. “Hopefully then you’ll feel a little more like your old self.”

He locks her in, leaving her alone with the clothes he brought and her own traitorous thoughts. She’s only glad she no longer has to worry him seeing them on her face.

As her old self was rather in love with him before he showed his true colors, she’s afraid he’s already got his wish.

 


	77. sorry I scared you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In season 2, Jemma is captured by Hydra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "I'm sorry I scared you, I didn't mean to" from shineyma. I ... didn't quite get it all in, but I'm sure she'll will forgive me.
> 
> There's a **content warning** for this in the end tag to avoid spoiling anyone who doesn't want to be. If you think you might need it, be sure to check it out.

Jemma is in shock. She has enough sense left to recognize that. The chill in her extremities, the way her thoughts flit from the chaos of the recent battle to her graduation from the Academy to laughing late at night with Skye, the detachment with which she takes in what’s happening around her – it’s all indicative of shock.

Which is just silly this late in the game. Shouldn’t shock have set in sooner? Back at the lab that turned out to be a Hydra trap or in the quinjet when her fear of heights collided with the reality she’d been captured by the enemy. Why should it wait until she’s being dragged through Hydra’s pristine white halls? It’s enough to make her laugh.

And she does. The harsh sound breaks through the ice of her shock and she feels the cracks spreading through every inch of her. Her feet, so steady until now, falter and the arm wrapped securely around her waist pulls her more tightly against the body beside her.

“Something funny?” Ward asks.

“Yes,” she says while tears stream down her cheeks. Were they there before, falling but unnoticed in her shock? Or have they only just begun?

The two of them are so close he has to turn awkwardly to look at her while still pulling her deeper into Hydra’s den.

“You,” she says in answer to his question. It’s not entirely accurate. What’s funny—or not _funny_ , more so messed up that laughter becomes the only option—is that he’s what did it. Her former friend, her teammate, her enemy.

There was an argument happening around her on the flight here. The Hydra agents who took part in her capture were making crude comments about who was most deserving of access to her in between rounds of interrogation. Under other circumstances she might have been horrified, but she could barely hear the bickering over the acrophobia screaming between her ears.

Then they landed and she was on her way to a cell or torture or brainwashing, whichever generally awaits captured SHIELD agents, when Ward appeared with a cry of “dibs!” It became quickly apparent he was picking up the argument from the trip, though he hadn’t been present for it or the trap itself. He simply appeared, laid claim to her, and whisked her away.

His smile quirks on one side, pulling at the scar she warned him about back at Providence so long ago. “Okay,” he says slowly, drawing the word out in amusement.

His attention drifts from her to an agent approaching. They exchange nods, the stranger’s somewhat more lecherous as his eyes draw over her torn SHIELD jacket and the handcuffs around her wrists. Then all at once she finds herself against a wall.

“Stay put, baby,” he says. His hand is beside her head, caging her in, and his knee is slotted almost casually between her thighs, holding her in place. His free hand emerges from his pocket with a PIV card he uses to access the door she hadn’t noticed beside her.

“Have fun!” the stranger calls down the hall. “And hey, if you wanna share…”

“Go fuck yourself, Santoro,” Ward yells back. His eyes meet Jemma’s and his hand curls around the back of her neck. “Everyone knows I don’t share.”

She has no idea how to feel about that—doesn’t _want_ to know how to feel—and reaches for the ice that kept her earlier terror at bay. He jerks her to the side before she can grab onto it, leaving her with her heart in her throat and a terrible awareness of _everything_. The scratchy feel of dirt beneath her clothes, the lingering ache in her head from a blow she took, the coolness of Ward’s quarters compared to the hall outside, the bed. A sob wells in her throat, only to be choked by her heart already there.

“Hey.” The door shuts, sounding impossibly loud, and Ward’s hand closes around her wrist.

She fights. It’s practically pointless now but she does. She may be a victim but she refuses to be a passive participant in her own rape. She lashes out with fists and feet, curls her fingers to attack his face with her nails, bites at the arm that tries to restrain her.

But Ward is bigger and stronger with years more training. He grabs her around the waist and heaves her, literally throws her across the room and onto the bed. She bounces twice, twisting in between so she can see him coming. He’s on her before she can mount a defense, his weight making the mattress dip.

She hates herself for the fearful whimper that escapes her as he leans over her.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes.

Those two little words still the shivering in every inch of her.

His forehead nuzzles her temple and even at such a close distance his voice is barely loud enough for her to hear. “I’m sorry for scaring you. I wouldn’t have if there was any other way.”

She stays perfectly still and stares past the curls of his hair at the gray ceiling tiles.

“Now I’m gonna leave to go cut off some loose ends and before I do you’re gonna tell me you’re mine. All right?”

She makes no answer and he doesn’t seem to expect one. He eases off her, moving away to stand at the foot of the bed.

“You know what I wanna hear, baby,” he says, almost teasingly. Then, so coldly it’s like a knife through her he demands, “Say it.”

She has no idea what sick game he’s playing and she has no cause to do anything he says at all, but he said he would leave and if two little words are all it will take to make him go, she can certainly manage a quavering, “I’m yours.”

“That’s right. You had your fun running around with SHIELD but you’re back right where you belong now, aren’t you?” He lets the implications of that hang in the air and though his voice and his immediate meaning cause her fear to hammer in her chest, it’s his deeper meaning that catches her off guard.

 _Back_ he said. He could just mean that she’s back in Hydra after her narrow escape two months ago, but it _sounds_ like he means she’s back in his bed, somewhere she’s never been before. And didn’t he say something downstairs about her belonging to him? She was too frozen by shock to really notice but he did seem to imply that they had been more than friends prior to the uprising.

He tosses her a pair of keys from his pocket and gestures to the bathroom. “Get cleaned up. I’ve got some stuff to take care of. I’ll be back later.” His smile sharpens. “And then you can start making up for leaving me waiting all these months. You can start with an encore of Rio.”

Numbly, she shakes her head, thinking that nothing happened in Rio. They had a mission there nearly a year ago—an investigation of illegal drug dealing that they’d hoped would lead to the Clairvoyant—but she certainly didn’t have sex with anyone, especially not Ward. She was in no state for such a thing after being used as a human shield by one of the drug runners and spent half the night watching Doctor Who with Skye to stave off the nightmares she knew were waiting for her.

Ward saved her then of course, as he always seemed to before his true nature was revealed. She can still remember so clearly his plea that she trust him before he leveled his gun at her. More than that, she remembers that she did. Foolishly, naively, without hesitation.

“No,” she says levering herself into a sitting position while he steps towards the door. “You don’t seriously mean-”

“Oh yeah,” he cuts in, his voice heavy with filthy promise that will surely convince anyone listening that he means her to satisfy him sexually, “just like Rio.”

Her mouth hangs open in disbelief, only snapping shut at the electronic beep she imagines is the door locking behind him. “Bloody hell,” she murmurs, grabbing for the keys. There is no possible way she’s trusting Grant Ward; she’ll have to find her own way out of this mess.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for potential rape. It doesn't happen and it won't happen but the drama is largely centered on the potential of it.


End file.
